A federal court last week gave anti-nuclear groups two more weeks to coordinate next steps in their lawsuit challenging a recently-licensed interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in Texas.
The groups, which include Beyond Nuclear and the Sierra Club, now have until Oct. 12 to move forward in their case against the proposed Interim Storage Partners (ISP) interim storage site in Andrews County, Texas, according to a Sep. 24 filing in the D.C. circuit court of appeals. The initial deadline was Monday.
The anti-nukers’ petition, first filed by Beyond Nuclear in February, asks a federal judge to review and roll back ISP’s license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. NRC granted a license to the proposed Texas storage site earlier this month.
The most recent movement in the case before last week was Aug. 26, when the court added Texas minerals holding company Fasken Land and Minerals to the mix of petitioners. Fasken filed its own suit against NRC after the agency rejected several of its agency-level challenges to the proposed ISP site. The court had put the case on hold back in March until Fasken and the commission wrapped that business up.
The enviros’ case is spooling up again just as new legal challenges to the recently-licensed Texas site are beginning to spring up. Texas attorney general Ken Paxton filed suit against NRC Sep. 23 in the fifth circuit court of appeals, asking a judge there to nullify ISP’s license. At deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor there hadn’t been any additional filings in that case.
ISP isn’t the only interim storage hopeful dealing with a lawsuit. The state of New Mexico is challenging NRC’s authority to license Holtec International’s proposed site in Lea County, N.M. The agency on Sep. 14 said that it was ready for judgement in that case, which is pending in the U.S. District Court for New Mexico.
