Beyond Nuclear press release: NRC APPROVES TEXAS NUCLEAR WASTE ‘INTERIM’ STORAGE FACILITY, BUT A NEW TEXAS LAW AND A FEDERAL COURT CHALLENGE COULD PREVENT THE PROJECT FROM GOING FORWARD
NEWS RELEASE
For immediate release
NRC APPROVES TEXAS NUCLEAR WASTE ‘INTERIM’ STORAGE FACILITY, BUT A NEW TEXAS LAW AND A FEDERAL COURT CHALLENGE COULD PREVENT THE PROJECT FROM GOING FORWARD
Contacts: Kevin Kamps, kevin@beyondnuclear.org, 269-716-8174
Stephen Kent, skent@kentcom.com, 914-589-5988
[Andrews County, Texas – September 14] Late yesterday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced it approved licensing for Interim Storage Partners’ controversial consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) in Andrews County in West Texas, on the New Mexico border. The facility is designed to store high-level radioactive waste from nuclear power plants across the U.S. But NRC approval notwithstanding, a new Texas law and a federal court challenge may block the project.
Interim Storage Partners (ISP) is a joint venture of Waste Control Specialists (WCS) and ORANO (formerly Areva, a French nuclear group). It would store up to 40,000 metric tons of irradiated fuel from nuclear reactors -- also known euphemistically as “spent” nuclear fuel (SNF), despite the fact it is highly radioactive and lethal -- in dry storage canisters on surface concrete pads. If the facility opens, it would be the first private CISF in the U.S.
A second CISF 35 miles away in New Mexico, proposed by Holtec International, is also expected to be licensed early next year. It would have the capacity to store an additional 173,600 metric tons of irradiated fuel in shallowly buried canisters. Since the entire SNF inventory at US reactors is only about 90,000 metric tons, experts have questioned why the Texas and New Mexico facilities would need a combined capacity of 213,600 metric tons. There is precedent for shipping irradiated fuel from other countries to the US for storage at Idaho National Labs, and in 2018, a test shipment of a mock SNF cask was transported from Europe to Colorado.
Opening a CISF in the U.S. would initiate many thousands of shipments of domestic irradiated fuel across 44 states and 75% of Congressional districts. SNF canisters and transport casks are subject to radiation leakage and other failures, that would pose threats to thousands of communities along the transportation routes.
“Transporting highly radioactive waste is inherently high-risk,” said Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist with Beyond Nuclear. “Fully loaded irradiated nuclear fuel containers would be among the very heaviest loads on the roads, rails, and waterways. They would test the structural integrity of badly degraded rails, for example, risking derailments. Even if our nation’s infrastructure is ever renovated someday, the shipping containers themselves will remain vulnerable to severe accidents and terrorist attacks, which could release catastrophic amounts of hazardous radioactivity, as in a densely populated urban area. Even so-called ‘routine’ or ‘incident-free’ shipments are like mobile X-ray machines that can’t be turned off, in terms of the hazardous emissions of gamma and neutron radiation, dosing innocent passersby, as well as transport workers.”
The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board recommends spending a minimum of a decade to develop better SNF cask and canister designs before attempting to transport irradiated nuclear fuel. Yet ISP expects its CISF to open and start accepting shipments in the next few years. But a lawsuit in federal court and near-unanimous opposition in the Texas legislature to importing spent nuclear fuel could upend ISP’s expectations.
Siting nuclear facilities is supposed to be consent-based, but Texas has made it abundantly clear it does not consent. This month, in advance of the NRC licensing the ISP facility, the Texas legislature overwhelmingly approved a bill banning storage or disposal of high-level radioactive waste, including SNF, in the state, and directing the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to deny state permits the ISP project needs. The measure passed the Texas Senate unanimously, and passed the Texas House 119-3.
"This kind of bipartisan vote is very rare", said Karen Hadden, Executive Director of the SEED Coalition. "The message should be loud and clear: Texas doesn't want the nation's deadliest nuclear waste and does not consent to being a dumping ground."
Texas Governor Abbott signed the bill into law last week. Before the Texas Legislature passed the law, opposition to the ISP project in Texas was widespread and vocal. Abbott and a bipartisan group of U.S. Congressional Representatives from Texas wrote strong letters to the NRC opposing the project. Resolutions opposing importing nuclear waste from other states to Texas were also passed by Andrews County and five other counties and three cities, representing 5.4 million Texans. School districts, the Midland Chamber of Commerce and oil and gas companies joined environmental and faith-based groups in opposing the ISP project.
“I am thankful that the Texas Legislature voted to stop this dangerous nuclear waste from coming to their state,” said Rose Gardner of the watchdog group Alliance for Environmental Strategies. She lives in Eunice, New Mexico, close to the ISP project site in Texas, and to another WCS waste dump for hazardous and low-level radioactive waste. “I live less than five miles from the site, yet my community in New Mexico has no vote and no choice, and gave no consent for nuclear waste to be stored at the facility. I have long been concerned about WCS and its voracious appetite for bringing more and more nuclear waste to my area, claiming it now needs a license for high-level radioactive waste because the waste disposal business wasn't making enough money. I hope my concerns will be heard by a higher court than the NRC."
Gardner is a declarant in a federal court challenge to the CISFs. Two lawsuits that could block the ISP project in Texas and the Holtec project in New Mexico on the grounds that they violate federal law are currently pending at U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the second highest court in the land after the U.S. Supreme Court.
CISFs are predicated on the idea that the U.S. Department of Energy will enable SNF transportation by taking title to the waste as it leaves the reactor site, thus relieving the licensees of their liability for it. But transferring responsibility for nuclear waste from private businesses to the federal government is specifically prohibited by federal law -- namely the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as Amended (NWPA) -- unless and until a geologic repository is open and operating. An operating geologic repository remains many decades away. The provision was included in the law to guard against “interim” storage sites becoming de facto permanent surface dumps, for lack of anywhere else to export the waste. But contrary to the NWPA, the CISF licensing process was pushed ahead anyway, on the objectionable assumption that the law will change.
“The NRC never should have even considered these applications, because they blatantly violate the federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act by assuming that the federal government will take responsibility for the waste before a permanent repository is licensed and operating,” said Diane Curran, an attorney for Beyond Nuclear, one of the groups that brought the suits. ”Licensing the ISP and Holtec facilities would defeat Congress’s purpose of ensuring that nuclear waste generated by U.S. reactors will go to a deep geologic repository, rather than to vulnerable surface facilities that may become permanent nuclear waste dumps.”
Now that the NRC has licensed the ISP facility, the briefing phase of the DC Court of Appeals lawsuit is expected to begin soon. Participants in the legal challenge to the ISP and Holtec facilities include the NGOs Beyond Nuclear, the Sierra Club, the Austin-based Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition, and the Don't Waste Michigan, et al. national coalition of watchdog groups. Both lawsuits were also joined by the oil and gas company Fasken Land and Minerals, Ltd., and Permian Basin Land and Royalty Owners Association which advocates for ranching and mineral rights.
"The grand illusion of nuclear power is now revealed,” said Michael J. Keegan of Don't Waste Michigan, one of the intervenors in the lawsuits. “There is nowhere to put the waste. No community consents to accept nuclear waste -- not Texas, not Michigan, or anywhere on this planet. We have to stop making it. No more weapons of mass deception!"
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NOTE TO EDITORS AND PRODUCERS: Sources quoted in this release, participants in the lawsuits challenging CISFs and their attorneys, and other experts are available for comment and interviews. Fact sheets documenting problems with and alternatives to CISFs are posted here. For more information, additional documentation, or to arrange an interview, please contact Stephen Kent, skent@kentcom.com, 914-589-5988.
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