By John Stang
Local leaders on Thursday touted the anticipated economic benefits of a planned spent nuclear fuel storage site in southeastern New Mexico, while others characterized the project as an example of economic racism.
About 40 people spoke during a second webinar to discuss the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s draft environmental impact statement (EIS) on Holtec International’s application for a 40-year license for its consolidated interim storage facility. Roughly 60 people called in to a June 23 teleconference.
In both sessions, representatives for the governments and business interests of local communities strongly supported the project. They said the draft EIS showed little ill-effects from the interim facility, which could boost a struggling economy.
“My take is that the residents Lea and Eddy counties believe this will be beneficial for their area,” said state Sen. Ron Griggs (R). “The NRC’s rigorous process will ensure Holtec will protect this area.”
“It will help diversify our economy,” said Missi Currier, president and CEO of the Economic Development Corporation of Lea County.
The facility would be built in Lea County, between the cities of Hobbs and Carlsbad. Those jurisdictions, along with Eddy County, formed the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance to support the Holtec project – primarily by providing 1,000 acres of land on which it would be built. The organization has said the facility would generate 215 new “highly paid” jobs and a $2.4 billion capital investment.
The March 2017 license application from the New Jersey-based energy technology company would cover construction and operation of just-underground storage of 500 canisters containing 8,680 metric tons of spent fuel from U.S. nuclear power plants. The license would expire after four decades, but with additional NRC approvals could be extended to 120 years and over 100,000 metric tons of the radioactive waste in 10,000 canisters.
The draft EIS from NRC staff concluded the Holtec facility would have little environmental effect on that region of New Mexico in both the 500-canister and 10,000-canister scenarios. The agency’s staff has preliminarily recommended approval of the license.
Staff’s findings were much the same for a separate storage operation planned just across the border in West Texas by a joint venture of Orano and Waste Control Specialists. The Interim Storage Partners facility would start with a 40-year license for 5,000 metric tons of radioactive material, but could be expanded up to 40,000 metric tons.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff quickly summarized the draft’s conclusions Thursday regarding impacts on transportation safety, groundwater, air quality, wildlife, traffic, and other environmental aspects in southeastern New Mexico and beyond.
A major theme at both hearings consisted of concerns about the lifespan of the Lea County site drifting past a century, given that the federal government still does not have a permanent repository for the waste. The proposed disposal facility at Yucca Mountain, Nev., remains unlicensed and unbuilt, 12 years after the Department of Energy filed its application with the NRC.
On Thursday, critics voiced qualms about the draft EIS studying a 40-year scenario and ignoring the possibility that Holtec might not exist or not be affiliated with the Lea County facility several decades from now.
“This makes the 40-year analysis of the EIS a pile of poo-poo,” said David McCoy, executive director of the advocacy group Citizens Action New Mexico.
“When Holtec folds, who’ll be holding the bag?” said Eddy County resident Nicholas King. “When Holtec walks away, what will be the incentive for the rest of the country to clean up the mess?”
No Holtec representatives spoke during the webinar.
The draft EIS says as many as 19 expansions of the site’s storage capacity are not included in the initial licensing. But staff said it still evaluated those anticipated expansions in describing “the affected environment and impact determinations in this draft EIS, where appropriate, when the environmental impacts of the potential future expansion can be determined so as to conduct a bounded analysis for the proposed CISF project.”
Several callers said New Mexico is 37% white, that people of color make up a large part of the population along railroad tracks that would carry the spent fuel across the nation, and the Navajo Nation reservation is near the proposed site.
Census estimates from July 1, 2019, cite 49.3% of New Mexico’s roughly 2.1 million residents as Hispanic or Latino. White residents, not of Hispanic or Latino origin, comprise 36.8% of the population.
This area dominated by people of color could end up with a permanent spent nuclear fuel site by default, critics argued Thursday. Not all of the draft EIS has been translated in to Spanish, they added.
“This project is racism. How dare you not define this as environmental racism,” said Eileen Shaughnessy, co-founder of the Albuquerque-based Nuclear Issues Study Group.
“A lot of people don’t speak English along the Southwest’s railroads,” said Karen Hadden, executive director of the SEED Coalition in Austin, Texas.
Agency officials said those concerns would be addressed later in written responses. No one directly contested the racism charges on Thursday.
In both the June 23 and Thursday hearings, participants complained about the difficulties in connecting by phone to testify at a teleconference prompted by social distancing requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The NRC plans to finalize the draft EIS by next March, but has acknowledged the potential schedule impacts from the current health crisis. The agency intends to hold future live meetings in New Mexico, but those have not yet been scheduled.
Two lawsuits have already been filed in federal appeals court over the NRC’s rejection of petitions by advocacy groups for adjudicatory hearings on the license application. The New Mexico government under Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) has also been critical of the project, citing potential harm to the state’s agricultural and energy industries.
Holtec has said it anticipates a ruling on the license application next March. Afterward, construction would begin once funding is identified. Construction could be completed and Holtec could begin receiving fuel as early as 2023.
Comments on the document are being accepted through Sept. 22. They can be submitted via email, to [email protected]; at regulations.gov, Docket ID NRC-2018-0052; or by mail to Office of Administration, Mail Stop: TWFN-7-A60M, ATTN: Program Management, Announcements and Editing Staff, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001.
