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In 2013, the United States (U.S.) Department of Energy (DOE) attempted to initiate a consent-based siting (CBS) approach to better engage diverse publics and thereby begin to remedy a legacy of technocratic decision-making and inequitable public engagement processes plaguing historical high-level nuclear waste siting efforts. DOE's remediation work included a contract with the Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology (ECAST) network to employ participatory technology assessment (pTA) to help co-create the CBS process with lay publics. In late 2016, the DOE terminated the process to develop a CBS process. To date, little in the public record explores DOE's novel foray into CBS. As researchers on DOE's aborted ECAST efforts, we situate the novel pTA process to create a CBS process amidst the technocratic political-historical context of commercial nuclear waste siting in the U.S. Lessons …