Environmental coalition legally intervenes against WCS/ISP CISF, by NRC deadline

On Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018, a coalition of environmental groups legally intervened in opposition to the Waste Control Specialists/Interim Storage Partners centralized interim storage facility (CISF) for irradiated nuclear fuel, targeted at Andrews County, Texas, by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's deadline.

Sierra Club chapters in Texas and New Mexico, represented by Iowa-based attorney Wally Taylor, filed a request for hearing and petition for leave to intervene.

So too did Toledo, OH-based attorney Terry Lodge, on behalf of a seven-group coalition, including: Don’t Waste Michigan, Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination, Public Citizen, Inc., San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, Nuclear Energy Information Service, Citizens’ Environmental Coalition, and Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition. Lodge also serves as legal counsel to an individual, Leona Morgan of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

See an 8-page SUMMARY of the Don't Waste MI, et al., contentions, here.

As part of its intervention, the seven-group coalition's legal counsel, Lodge, filed an expert witness declaration by Dr. James David Ballard, entitled "Interim Storage Partners: Transportation of the Inventory and the Storage of Highly Radioactive Waste Materials."

Lodge also filed an expert witness declaration by Robert Alvarez, Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University, and former senior policy adviser to the Secretary of Energy and deputy assistant secretary for national security and the environment at the U.S. Department of Energy from 1993 to 1999. The expert witness declaration is entitled "Comments on the Application for a License for a Consolidated Interim Spent Fuel Storage Facility by Waste Control Specialists LLC (Docket No. 72-1050)," which includes the following subject matter: Failure to Accurately Address Life-Cycle Costs; High Burnup Spent Nuclear Fuel; and Repackaging for Disposal.

(Both Taylor and Lodge, on behalf of the Sierra Club, as well as the national grassroots environmental coalition, have also legally intervened against the Holtec International/Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance CISF, targeted at southeastern NM, just 40 miles from WCS/ISP's CISF in West Texas.)

For its part, Beyond Nuclear legally intervened against the WCS/ISP CISF on Oct. 3, 2018. Beyond Nuclear's legal counsel includes Diane Curran of Harmon, Curran in Washington, D.C., and Mindy Goldstein of the Turner Environmental Law Clinic at Emory University in Atlanta, GA.

(Beyond Nuclear has also intervened against Holtec/ELEA's CISF in NM.

Beyond Nuclear has also filed motions to dismiss both the NM and TX CISF proceedings. However, NRC rejected these motions to dismiss, so Beyond Nuclear has been forced to engage in the NRC licensing proceedings.)

What can you do? Please submit public comments against the WCS/ISP CISF, to the NRC, by the agency's Nov. 19th deadline.

Update on November 16, 2018 by admin

See SEED/Public Citizen press release, here.