Opponents of commercial interim storage of spent nuclear fuel flooded the Supreme Court this week with briefs ahead of oral arguments scheduled for the spring.
Those filing friends of the court briefings include: 10 U.S. states; members of Texas’ congressional delegation, led by both of its U.S. senators; four interest groups; and the city of Fort Worth, Texas.
There were nine briefs altogether, some filed jointly, and each opposed commercial interim storage. Such briefs come from people who are interested in or affected by a case but not one of the parties involved in the dispute.
The Texas delegation led off the landslide of filings on Tuesday, with members of congress attempting to poking holes in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s argument that the Atomic Energy Act gave the commission authority to license private interim storage of spent fuel by giving the agency jurisdiction over the use of three isotopes found in all used fuel.
“To conjure the Commission’s authority to license private, centralized, off-site storage of spent fuel, petitioners blend the Commission’s discrete powers to license the use of various components they say make up spent fuel,” wrote Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Reps. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), August Pfluger (R-Texas), and Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) in their brief.
These U.S. lawmakers called NRC’s argument a “witches’-brew interpretation” of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, which, they say, covered only activities required to produce electricity from nuclear reactions and did not discuss the storage of spent fuel at all.
Texas’ delegation also argued that the proposed interim storage site in Texas could threaten oil production in the Permian Basin, which “fuels the country’s economy and safeguards the country’s strategic energy independence.”
NRC has said the Atomic Energy Act allows the agency to license the use of constituent isotopes of spent fuel and, therefore, to license spent fuel.
The current Supreme Court case stems from a Texas lawsuit filed in 2021 in the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals against NRC’s license of a private storage depot proposed by Interim Storage Partners, a joint venture of Waste Control Specialists and Orano, near the former’s existing low-level waste storage site in west Texas.
The high court, an independent branch of the federal government, was scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case on March 5. The Fifth Circuit’s ruling in 2023 voided licenses held by Interim Storage Partners and by Holtec International, which proposed an interim storage site in eastern New Mexico.
The full list of amicus briefs filed this week in opposition to NRC’s argument, in the order listed on the court’s docket, is:
Cruz, Cornyn, Arrington Cuellar, Pfluger and Jackson.
The City of Fort Worth, which said among other things that it was “concerned” about a host of nuclear safety issues unrelated to some of the legal arguments advanced by the participants in the lawsuit.
The Pacific Legal Foundation, a 50 year-old nonprofit specializing in suing the federal government, which in its brief said the NRC gate-keeps access to agency-level proceedings and therefore uses its legal clout to prevent people opposed to the commission’s actions from gaining standing to sue in court.
The states Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia and Utah, the latter of which led the brief.
The state of Idaho, which led its own brief.
The states of New Mexico and Michigan, which filed as a pair.
The anti-nuclear group Don’t Waste Michigan.
The Permian Basin Petroleum Association and New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau, which filed jointly.
The anti-nuclear group Beyond Nuclear.
