In Zion, Illinois, 257 acres of prime lakefront property about 40 miles northwest of Chicago should be at the center of a redevelopment plan to revive a struggling community caught in the aftermath of a closed nuclear plant, says its mayor, Al Hill.

But after decades of federal inaction on a comprehensive strategy to move the nation’s high-level radioactive waste from some 121 sites across the country, Zion and its local officials are coming to the same stark realization as many other communities with shuttered or aging plants: The federal government’s foot-dragging on nuclear waste policy may seem as long as the radioactive materials’ 10,000-year half-life.

Some 64 so-called dry cask storage units containing 2.2 million pounds of deadly spent nuclear fuel rods are stored on the site of what was the Zion Nuclear Power Station, the remnants from generating nuclear power since 1974. And they’ve left Zion in a kind of purgatory, unable to move on from its nuclear past even as it must shoulder the public safety and health risks from the inability of Congress and multiple administrations to decide how to dispose of the radioactive waste.

“When businesses are considering locating in Zion or making real estate investments, the nuclear waste presents a negative perception of our community,” Hill said. “Plans call for the development of the lakefront, and we are unable to attract investments to that, to what should be the most valuable waterfront land along Lake Michigan.”

Aside from disposing of the spent fuel, the plant’s shutdown, or decommissioning, has gone well. The process is running nearly a decade ahead of the original timeline and below budget.