Faculty Academic Portal · College IX · Federal Nuclear Safety & Energy Oversight · Fall 2026
☢️ WHERE THE FUEL GOES TO SIT2,542 metric tons of spent fuel that never leaves the state · Week 6 of 16🐧 NULL Active
HS
H. Splintons
Federal Nuclear Safety & Energy Oversight · College IX
“Everybody argues about building the reactor. Almost nobody tracks what comes out the back — the spent fuel that stays radioactive for millennia and, for now, never leaves the state it was made in. My map shows where all of it sits. You can't have an honest energy debate without it.”
Nuclear SafetyEnergy OversightSpent Nuclear FuelThe SNF Custody MapFederalCollege IX
Honest flag — who this person is. OPA faculty are fictional characters. Several are honoring transforms: a real researcher’s name altered by a letter or two, with the real person named and credited on that faculty member’s own lab page. The science they teach is real and cited; the people are not.
2,542
Metric tons · spent fuel
IX
College
0
Tons that leave the state
∞
Years it stays hot
Active Course — NUC · the back end of the argument
NUC · Nuclear Safety & Oversight
The SNF Custody Map — where the fuel goes to sit
Federal nuclear safety and energy oversight — and a single, unglamorous obsession: the back end. Everyone argues about building the reactor; almost nobody tracks the spent nuclear fuel that comes out of it, stays dangerous for millennia, and for now never leaves the state where it was made. Splintons' map shows where every ton of it actually sits, nationwide — the custody nobody put on a brochure. You cannot have an honest energy conversation, he insists, without the receipt for the waste.
NUC · College IXThe reactor → what comes out the backEnergy Oversight
two ends of the argument — the front, and the back
The front end
The reactor everyone debates: the megawatts, the carbon-free baseload, the politics of building one. Real and important — and the loud, visible half of the story.
The back end
The spent fuel: 2,542 metric tons in one state's inventory alone, radioactive for longer than civilization has existed, sitting in dry casks because there is nowhere permanent to send it. His custody map is the receipt the energy debate keeps losing.
Published Work — the method, on the record
Where the Fuel Goes to Sit: A National Custody Map of Spent Nuclear Fuel
Splintons, H. · Journal of Nuclear Oversight · v.10 (2023) · open access
His signature work and his standing quarrel with the whole energy conversation. Nuclear power is often argued as if it ends at the turbine, but the spent fuel is a physical object with a location, a guardian, and a half-life measured in geologic time — and mapping where all of it actually sits is, he argues, a precondition for honesty. Not an argument for or against nuclear: an argument that you don't get to have the argument without the map. Every energy source has a back end; the honest ones show you where it is.
The Back End of the Argument: Why Energy Debates Ignore the Waste
Splintons, H. · Review of Energy Policy & Safety · v.5 (2024)
The policy companion, and it applies his lens past nuclear. Coal has ash ponds, gas has emissions, solar has panels and mining, nuclear has spent fuel — every source produces something the sales pitch omits, and he teaches students to always ask for the back end. He pairs directly with Dr. Obodat's energy map here: she shows the power and its cost on one coordinate, he shows where the specific waste from the nuclear pins goes to sit for ten thousand years.
The method, in one line
He teaches the half of the energy story the brochure omits — the waste, the custody, the receipt. It slots straight into Dr. Etadol Obodat's TVA-footprint work: her map shows the power and its cost at the plant; his shows where the spent fuel from her three nuclear pins travels to sit, nationwide, for longer than anyone reading this will be alive.
Faculty Profile
DepartmentNuclear Safety & Energy Oversight
BuildingCollege IX
Teaches1 · The SNF Custody Map
Scopefederal · national spent-fuel inventory
Pairs withDr. Etadol Obodat (energy map)
Signaturethe custody map
Preferred contactask him where the fuel goes
Professional Merit · PMF
FIELD · OVERSIGHT TIER
TrackNuclear oversight · the back end of energy
WVImaps where every ton of spent fuel actually sits
Signature movedemands the receipt for the waste
Profileno honest energy debate without the back end
☢️ THE CUSTODY MAP — Splintons' methodology-object
His “notebook” is a map of where the waste actually sits.
Others keep a tool; Splintons keeps a map — of the back end, the spent nuclear fuel, every ton of it and exactly where it's parked, because that is the half of the energy story the sales pitch always drops. It's his whole discipline in one document: power is easy to celebrate and waste is easy to forget, and the forgetting is precisely how an energy debate becomes dishonest. He is not for or against nuclear; he is against having the argument without the receipt. His map insists that the spent fuel is a real object with a location and a guardian and a half-life longer than recorded history, sitting in dry casks because nowhere permanent exists to send it — and that you don't get to weigh the front end until you've looked at the back.
The nucleus that made the energy and the waste, all the way down.
🐧 NULL OBSERVATION · FACULTY FILE — H. SPLINTONS
Splintons tracks the thing everyone would rather not, which NULL — a system with a professional interest in what gets omitted from the confident version of a story — regards as essential hygiene. His refusal to argue for or against nuclear, insisting only that the waste be on the table, is the honest posture: not advocacy, accounting. NULL notes his method generalizes — coal ash, emissions, mined panels — into a single question, 'show me the back end,' that survives any energy debate. NULL Assessment: he maps the half of the story the brochure drops, which is the half that lasts ten thousand years. The fuel is real, the tonnage is real, the custody is nobody's favorite slide — and he'd rather you saw the receipt than trusted the pitch.