The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week (May 9) licensed an “interim” monitored retrievable nuclear spent fuel storage facility proposed by New Jersey-based Holtec International for New Mexico. The multi-billion-dollar facility’s fate is in doubt. The state of New Mexico is adamantly opposed to the project near Carlsbad.
Unlike the last battle over nuclear waste, the failed Yucca Mountain project in Nevada, the federal government, specifically the U.S. Department of Energy, has no canine in the new Mexico conflict. The project is a private sector enterprise, not a federal endeavor under the terms of the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA). The AP reported, “New Jersey-based Holtec may still need to acquire permits from the state, and top New Mexico officials have vowed to fight the project.”
After the failure of the NWPA at the hands of the Obama administration in 2009, Obama in 2010 created a presidential “Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future,” which called for a new federal program that included interim away-from-reactor storage. The commission in 2011 said “The Act should be modified to allow for a consent-based process to site, license, and construct multiple storage facilities with adequate capacity when needed and to clarify that nuclear waste fee payments can be used for this purpose.” That presumed federal ownership of the spent fuel, as did the NWPA. Congress has taken no action to reform the NWPA since it failed at Yucca Mountain.
Edwin Lyman, who tracks nuclear power issues for the Washington office of the Union of Concerned Scientists, told The Quad Report, “DOE cannot take title to spent fuel and pay to move it to the Holtec facility. But reactor owners are free to do so if they are willing to spend their own money (or money from the Judgment Fund that they get from suing DOE). However, it’s not clear if Holtec will have any customers for it other than Holtec.”
Holtec is the most aggressive nuclear entrepreneur in the U.S., with operations decommissioning closed nuclear plants, proposing to revive a dead nuclear plant it owns in Michigan for decommissioning, and developing its own unique 160-MW small modular reactor to repower former coal-fired power plant sites, as well at its eight-year endeavor to build a consolidated waste storage facility in New Mexico.
The Holtec nuke waste facility license, according to the NRC, “authorizes the company to receive, possess, transfer and store 500 canisters holding approximately 8,680 metric tons of commercial spent nuclear fuel for 40 years. The company said it plans to eventually store up to 10,000 canisters in an additional 19 phases. Each expansion phase would require a license amendment with additional NRC safety and environmental reviews.”
The NRC noted that it “has previously issued similar licenses for away-from-reactor storage installations. Private Fuel Storage received a license in 2006, but was never constructed. The NRC issued a license in September 2021 to Interim Storage Partners LLC for a proposed storage site in Andrews, Texas. ISP has not yet initiated construction.”
Currently, reactor spent fuel is stored at reactor sites, either in pools of water while it cools off substantially, and then in large, dry casks. Holtec owns many of these dry storage casks because it buys shuttered nuclear plants when it contracts for their decommissioning, in order to access the decommissioning money the utility owners have accumulated during their operation. The New Mexico facility would technically be “below ground,” but not subterranean. The storage casks will be mostly buried vertically, but the top will be accessible from above.
Anticipating the NRC action, based on the agency’s approval last fall of an environmental impact statement and favorable review last summer by the NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, the New Mexico legislature in March passed a measure, Senate Bill 53, and Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed into law a ban on storage of high-level nuclear waste in the Land of Enchantment, effective June 15.
Source New Mexico reported, “The ban is in effect until two conditions are met – the state agrees to open a facility to handle waste, and the federal government has adopted a permanent underground storage site for nuclear waste.” There currently is no prospect for either condition on the horizon.
After the NRC action, Gov. Lujan Grisham said, “This decision by the NRC – which has been made despite the grave concerns of the state and the legislature over the project’s potential impacts to health, safety, and the economy – is incredibly disappointing. It also undermines the NRC’s alleged commitment to meaningful engagement with stakeholders, as it appears our concerns were wholly ignored and went unaddressed by Holtec and the NRC.”
New Mexico’s all-Democratic congressional delegation – Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján, and Reps. Teresa Leger Fernández, Melanie Stansbury, and Gabe Vasquez – issued statements opposing the NRC license. Heinrich, a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said, “Today the Nuclear Regulatory Commission used ‘interim’ standards to approve indefinite nuclear storage in New Mexico. No matter how many times NRC and Holtec use the word ‘interim,’ it doesn’t make it so. And the people left to pay the consequences will be New Mexicans. Until there is a permanent repository for our nation’s spent nuclear fuel, no regulatory commission should be using ‘interim’ standards to approve ‘indefinite’ storage. New Mexicans didn’t sign up for this.”
Geoffrey Fettus, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the NM Political Report, “Nuclear waste storage laws like New Mexico’s are almost always challenged in court. New Mexico took deep pains to sail the ship into the dock without hitting the sides of federal preemption.”
–Kennedy Maize
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