Banning storage of high-level nuclear waste and spent fuel in New Mexico would be like diverting a planet-killing asteroid, a New Mexico state Senator who supports a ban said this week.
“This is our Don’t Look Up moment,” said state Sen. Jeff Steinborn (D) Tuesday during a New Mexico Senate Conservation Committee hearing, referencing the 2021 satirical comedy about an impending cosmic apocalypse.
The committee approved the ban bill 6-2, overwhelmingly backing Steinborn’s plan to blockade the state against nuclear waste even as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission reviews Holtec International’s application to build an interim storage site in the state’s southeastern reaches.
The New Mexico Senate Judiciary Committee, the bill’s next stop in the upper chamber, was not scheduled to debate the bill as of Friday afternoon. The Conservation Committee did not explicitly recommend the Judiciary Committee pass the measure, as committees are allowed to do in the New Mexico legislature.
Meanwhile, the state House-side version of the measure squeaked through its Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Committee Thursday on a 5-4 vote, earning a ‘do pass’ recommendation from the committee. The House Judiciary Committee is next up to hear the bill, but at deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor debate had yet to be scheduled.
A spokesperson for the office of state Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) told RadWaste Monitor via email Friday that the governor “supports the initiative.”
“[T]his is a moment in time, before this facility gets licensed, where we get to take that shot at the asteroid, we get to knock it off course,” Steinborn said Tuesday. “We get to encourage the federal government to actually determine where this waste goes in a thoughtful policy.”
Holtec, Camden, N.J., declined to comment Tuesday afternoon.
If it became law, the proposed measure would, besides amending state law to ban storage of spent fuel and high-level waste, also adjust the duties of an existing statewide radioactive waste task force, allowing it to examine the impacts of proposed private nuclear waste disposal facilities in addition to federal sites.
Steinborn was clear Tuesday that such a ban would not include transuranic waste stored at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M.
“WIPP is a federal facility: low level waste buried almost a mile underground, lots of jobs, very different risk profile,” Steinborn said. “[Holtec] is a private company, storing waste essentially on top of the ground, with, frankly, a very different safety profile.”
Holtec has said that its proposed site would store spent fuel in dry storage canisters housed in “below-grade” steel enclosures that can be retrieved and moved at any point during the site’s lifetime.
Steinborn Tuesday also called into question Holtec’s business character, saying that the nuclear services company has been fined by NRC for safety violations and has gotten in trouble for “corruption” in its home state of New Jersey. Holtec is involved in ongoing litigation with the Garden State’s economic development commission over a multi-million dollar tax incentive.
Even if Steinborn’s high-level waste ban becomes law, it may face an uphill legal battle. In a fiscal estimate for the proposed measure, the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) cautioned that the ban would not be upheld by a court “on a safety bases [sic], but may be upheld on economic impact, water impacts, or Environmental Justice grounds.”
“The state should articulate those other bases as the foundation for the prohibition of the storage or disposal of spent radioactive fuel and high-level waste,” NMED said.
If licensed, the Holtec site would be built in Eddy County, N.M. The company has said that the facility could store around 8,700 tons of nuclear waste in 500 canisters, with room for an additional 10,000 storage canisters that could be added through future license amendments.
Meanwhile, NRC’s licensing review of Holtec’s proposed site is stalled. The commission asked the company to provide more information so the feds can complete required safety and environmental reviews for the site. NRC told Holtec in November that it wouldn’t be able to complete the licensing review in January as planned until it had that extra info.
“This is our chance to change the course of our future,” Steinborn said Tuesday, “and to send a very strong message to the federal government that New Mexico does not consent to this project — that we want the federal government to do its job and get back to figuring out a real permanent solution to this waste.”
