The parties involved in a federal court case aimed at blocking a recently-licensed interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel could still be litigating through next summer, court filings this week show.
If a judge in the D.C. circuit court of appeals approves a draft schedule filed by the parties Tuesday, final briefings in the suit challenging Interim Storage Partners’ (ISP) proposed interim storage facility in west Texas would be due in June 2022. The petitioners, a coalition of anti-nuclear groups including Beyond Nuclear, the Sierra Club and mining company Fasken Land and Minerals, would file their initial arguments by Jan. 20.
At deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor there hadn’t been any ruling on the proposed schedule.
The last movement on the docket came Oct. 8, when the court allowed ISP to get involved in the proceedings alongside the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as the case, which has been on hold since March, starts to heat up again.
As the anti-nukers’ case threatens to drag out well into the new year, other legal challenges to the proposed ISP site, which NRC licensed in September, are cropping up. Texas state attorney general Ken Paxton filed suit against NRC Sep. 23, asking the fifth circuit court of appeals to take a look at ISP’s new license. At deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor Paxton’s had yet to file an argument in the case.
ISP, a joint venture between Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists (WCS) and Orano USA, plans to build its interim storage site at WCS’s existing low-level waste facility in Andrews, Texas.
Meanwhile, as ISP wades through legal challenges, another would-be interim storage company is battling its own. Holtec International is the target of a suit filed against NRC by New Mexico attorney general Hector Balderas, who took aim at Holtec’s own interim site planned for Lea County, N.M. The commission has said that it’s ready for the U.S. District Court for New Mexico to rule on its motion to dismiss the case, which was the latest filing in the matter at deadline.
