Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff this week recommended that the agency grant an operating license to an interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel proposed for eastern New Mexico, according to a new report.
In the final environmental impact statement (EIS) for Holtec International’s proposed interim storage project published Wednesday, NRC staff recommended “issuance of a license to Holtec authorizing the initial phase of the project, subject to the determinations in the staff’s safety review of the application.”
The agency based its recommendation on both Holtec’s environmental report and its own review which included consultations with local stakeholders and consideration of public comments.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) slammed NRC’s decision in a statement Wednesday, saying that the agency “is effectively choosing profit over public interest.”
“The state of New Mexico will not become a dumping ground for the nation’s spent nuclear fuel due to Congress’s failure to identify a permanent disposal solution for commercial nuclear waste,” Grisham said. “My message to the state Legislature is clear: deliver a proposal to my desk that protects New Mexico from becoming the de facto home of the country’s spent nuclear fuel and it will have my full support.”
Holtec CEO Kris Singh said in his own statement Wednesday that the Camden, N.J., nuclear services company “offers the Nation a structurally impregnable, below-ground, disaster-immune, essentially zero dose emitting, and visually inconspicuous facility that will have zero impact on the local oil, gas or potash mining operations or the lives of local farmers and ranchers, while creating well-paying clean energy jobs in the host communities.”
Holtec believes that “aggregating used fuel from 75 dispersed sites across the Country is both a national security imperative and an essential predicate for the rise of renascent nuclear energy to meet our Nation’s clean energy goals,” Singh said.
NRC’s recommendation represents one of two major regulatory hurdles cleared for Holtec’s interim storage project, proposed for Eddy County, N.M. The other, an agency safety review, has been delayed several times — NRC in May pushed it back to January 2023, saying that the agency still needed additional information from Holtec to wrap things up.
If it can finish the safety report by early next year, the commission has said it should be ready by then to license the site.
If it gets built, Holtec has said that its interim storage site, planned for Eddy County, N.M., would initially be able to store around 8,700 tons of spent nuclear fuel in 500 canisters. That capacity could be increased by 10,000 canisters in future license amendments.
NRC said in Wednesday’s EIS that such an expansion is “not part of the proposed action currently pending before the agency,” but that staff factored in the possibility of an eventual 10,000-canister facility when assessing environmental effects.
Meanwhile, Holtec’s proposed interim storage has faced fierce opposition in the Land of Enchantment. The U.S. District Court for New Mexico in March dismissed a suit from state Attorney General Hector Balderas challenging NRC’s authority to license the project. The state legislature in Santa Fe has also tried to slow the process, debating, but failing to pass, two bills aimed at blocking Holtec’s proposed site: one during the 2022 legislative session and one in the 2021 session.
