Getting more than 6,000 gallons of unstable, liquid nuclear waste from Canada to a reprocessing and recycling site near Aiken, S.C. is proving — unsurprisingly — to be a complicated affair for federal officials. They want to ship it piecemeal over the ground using interstates in a process that covers 1,100 miles and could include passing through Butler County.

Environmental groups including the Sierra Club have, in a lawsuit, cried foul. They call the plan, which could use about 200 miles of Interstate 79 in Pennsylvania, “unprecedented” and unnecessarily risky.

Among other things, the groups object to the waste being shipped in liquid form — something they say has never been done here. The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency has called the liquid shipment “unusual.”

The federal government says it’s analyzed the plan and held more than 100 training sessions with local responders along various transportation routes, and is confident that the plan is safe.

It’s easy to see both sides of the coin when it comes to an issue like this. No one wants his community to be the site of a traffic accident that results in a nuclear spill. Conversely, reclaiming radioactive material that we created is an issue that needs to be faced.

The big takeaway, however, makes everyone look bad: We still lack a comprehensive plan to deal with America’s radioactive waste.

Despite our country’s lack of a long-range plan when it comes to nuclear power and waste, the facilities — of which there are 104 currently operating — continue to be a vital part of our energy infrastructure.

In Pennsylvania, nuclear power from nine reactors supplies nearly 36 percent of the state’s electricity. Nuclear reactors are in proximity to some of the commonwealth’s largest cities: Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Harrisburg to name a few. We are doing our fair share of creating the kind of dangerous and difficult-to-manage waste that has ignited the lawsuit.

Failing to plan for the long term — this waste stays radioactive for thousands of years, and needs to be disposed of in secure, permanent facilities — can get expensive when long-range planning isn’t performed. Just how expensive?

The bill for cleaning up a 44-acre nuclear waste site in Parks Township, Allegheny County, is pegged at $412 million and expected to take more than 10 years, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That cleanup includes highly radioactive materials like uranium and plutonium that were dumped there along with chemical waste by the now-defunct Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp. from 1960 until the early 1970s.

A “not-in-my backyard” debate over the transport and storage of nuclear waste in this country is nothing new. But if nuclear energy continues to play such a large role in our nation’s energy strategy, nuclear waste will play an equal role.

Instead of allowing the situation to devolve into a series of turf wars that ignite on an issue-by-issue basis, we need to develop and implement a long-term strategy that moves away from temporary storage facilities and focuses on long-term, secure storage.