ALBUQUERQUE – Top New Mexico executives say they are open to “almost anything” that would prevent spent nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive waste from being stored in the state indefinitely, including laws such as a recent preventive measure passed by Texas the shipping and storage of such waste.
The renewed criticism of planned interim storage facilities in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico came this week as federal regulators were just issuing a license for planned operations in Texas.
Interim Storage Partners LLC plans to build a facility in Andrews County that could hold up to 5,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel from power plants and 231 million tons of other radioactive waste.
In New Mexico, Holtec International is waiting for approval of its license application for a facility that will initially store up to 8,680 tons of uranium. Future expansions could create space for up to 10,000 canisters of spent fuel elements in six decades.
New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, and other high-ranking officials have already made comments against the multi-billion dollar proposal on her side of the state line and against the Texas Project. New Mexico is also suing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, claiming it didn’t do enough to review Holtec’s plans.
Lujan Grisham’s office said it was open to legal scrutiny and funding that could fuel New Mexico regulators’ efforts to slow down administration.
“We are open to almost anything to prevent the placement of such a national high-level waste facility in New Mexico,” Tripp Stelnicki, a spokesman for Lujan Grisham, told the Associated Press in an email.
New Mexico attorney general Hector Balderas said the trial against the NRC was in the early stages and he still had concerns.
“As a largely poor state and with predominantly colored communities, viewing New Mexico as a landfill for the country’s nuclear waste is unacceptable,” he said. “And the Department of Energy, Congress and the legislature should do absolutely everything in their power to protect New Mexican families.”
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, takes a similar stance and tweeted this week that “Texas is not going to become America’s nuclear landfill.”
Holtec said the New Jersey-based company and its partners in Counties Eddy and Lea, New Mexico, are determined to complete the state regulatory process for the proposed facility.
“While we consider developments in Texas, Holtec and ELEA are [Eddy Lea Energy Alliance] The project has strong support from local community leaders as they know the proposed project is safe and will provide an economic benefit to the area, ”said Joe Delmar, senior director of government affairs and communications for the company.
Texas and New Mexico fear the garbage will be stranded in their states because the federal government has failed to find a permanent landfill for decades.
According to the Department of Energy, nuclear reactors across the country produce more than 2,000 tons of radioactive waste per year, with most of it remaining on-site because it cannot be stored anywhere else.
In nearly three dozen states, fuel is held in temporary storage bins, either locked in steel-lined concrete pools or in steel and concrete containers called barrels.
In the 1980s, the Department of Energy and Congress approved the construction of a permanent underground burial site in Nevada. Officials there fought the project for years, and Congress cut funding for it in 2011. Federal permit for a temporary landfill in Utah was granted in 2006, but it was never built.
New Mexico state Democrat Jeff Steinborn, chairman of the Legislative Committee on Radioactive and Hazardous Materials, said the passage of new laws would send an “unequivocal message” that the region is opposed to becoming a spent fuel repository.
The Biden government was at best vague about how to approach the problem, Steinborn said.
“What I’d really like to hear is a commitment to go back to the drawing board for a permanent solution,” he said posted by a private company and a small handful of people who have decided this is a good business opportunity. “
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