Steenrod operations on the Chow ring of a classifying space

We use the Steenrod algebra to study the Chow ring CH*BG of the classifying space of an algebraic group G. We describe a localization property which relates a given G to its elementary abelian subgroups, and we study a number of particular cases, namely symmetric groups and Chevalley groups. It turns out that the Chow rings of these groups are completely determined by the abelian subgroups and their fusion.