Federal judges on Tuesday repeatedly questioned claims that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission illegally licensed Holtec International to store spent fuel under contract to the Department of Energy.
The long-awaited oral arguments in U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia are part of a lawsuit from 2021 that now includes the anti-nuclear groups Beyond Nuclear, the Sierra Club and the mineral rights group Fasken Land and Minerals and Permian Basin Land and Royalty Owners, both of Midland, Texas.
The court posted recordings of the arguments to YouTube.
Two of the panel’s judges, Judge Neomi Rao and Judge Justin Walker, each picked at Beyond Nuclear’s marquee claim that the NRC’s license, which allows Holtec to take custody of commission-regulated materials that are always present in spent nuclear fuel, illegally allows the Jupiter, Fla., company to enter a contract with DOE for the storage of spent nuclear fuel from civilian power plants.
Under federal law, that no one involved with the suit disputes, DOE is not allowed to take custody to spent nuclear fuel from power plants until the agency has built a permanent deep geologic repository in which to store it.
Beyond Nuclear argued that Holtec’s NRC license contained language allowing the company to operate in accordance with the final safety analysis report for the company’s proposed, unbuilt interim storage facility in New Mexico. That report mentions taking title to DOE-owned fuel.
Judge Walker dragged the issue into the open during his questioning of Holtec attorney Anne Leidich.
“To be extremely, almost unnecessarily clear, if Congress does not change the law to allow DOE-owned waste to be stored here, you do not plan to store DOE waste?” Walker asked.
“Holtec will not store any waste that DOE has taken title to illegally under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act,” Leidich said.
Beyond Nuclear attorney Diane Curran maintained, however, that because the license incorporates language allowing eventual contracting with DOE, Beyond Nuclear and other groups like it will never get a chance to have a hearing at the NRC over future federal storage contracts at the proposed Holtec facility.
The court had not issued any opinion in the case as of Wednesday.
