(The Center Square) — Louisiana is asking the U.S. Department of Energy for more time to negotiate an agreement that could make the state a hub for nuclear fuel recycling, storage and potentially the permanent disposal of nuclear waste, as state officials begin quietly sounding out communities that might be willing to host the project.

The deadline to submit a plan is currently Sept. 30, which leaves only fifteen days for the state to have a comprehensive plan on how and where to store nuclear waste.

State officials have begun meeting with local leaders in several parts of Louisiana to explain the project, gauge interest and identify concerns before settling on a potential site. So far, the state has made visits to East and West Feliciana Parish, LaFourche, Bossier and Madison.

DOE officials made the waste component particularly explicit Tuesday during a congressional hearing examining the program.

“In practice, this lifecycle begins with the relocation of irradiated material from sites across the country to a campus,” Assistant Energy Secretary Theodore Garrish said in written testimony. He said the material could then be stored, recycled and ultimately disposed of at the campus.

That could put Louisiana near the center of a problem the federal government has failed to solve for decades.

The United States has accumulated more than 99,000 tons of commercial spent nuclear fuel stored at 75 sites in 33 states, according to a House Energy and Commerce Committee memo released for Tuesday’s hearing. Another roughly 2,000 tons is generated each year. The federal government was supposed to begin taking possession of commercial spent fuel in 1998, but no permanent repository ever opened.

Louisiana already has two operating nuclear plants, River Bend near St. Francisville and Waterford 3 in St. Charles Parish, but it does not currently have a commercial facility dedicated to processing or storing the fuel. Spent fuel from nuclear plants is generally kept in pools or dry casks while awaiting a permanent federal solution.

DOE says a fully developed campus could attract as much as $50 billion in capital investment. Garrish told Congress Tuesday that a campus could generate as much as $10 billion in state and local tax revenue and nearly 22,000 jobs at full scale, although those figures are federal projections rather than commitments.

“We’ve got a lot of inputs and we’ve got a lot of output,” Stephen Swiber, Deputy Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Conservation and Energy told The Center Square, “And now we just need them to help us bridge that gap so we can be all parts of the value chain.”

A Louisiana site could offer the company access to the Mississippi River, extensive rail and industrial infrastructure and a workforce accustomed to large energy and chemical facilities — advantages the state has increasingly emphasized as it tries to develop a broader nuclear supply chain.

“If you’re trying to build out something as as big as the White House is envisioning, we’re going to be a really really attractive place to do that,” Swiber said.

Gov. Jeff Landry launched Louisiana’s first Nuclear Strategic Framework earlier this year, identifying nuclear manufacturing, expanded generation, uranium conversion and fuel enrichment as economic-development priorities.

Congress would have to change federal law before the full concept envisioned by DOE could be implemented. Garrish acknowledged Tuesday that existing law prevents the department from simply creating multiple new permanent disposal sites. The House committee’s briefing memo similarly said additional nuclear waste disposal sites would require amendments to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.