The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is planning to fire its next salvo this month in an ongoing legal battle over one of two proposed interim storage facilities for spent nuclear fuel, according to a court filing this week.
NRC will file its next brief in the case over Holtec International’s proposed storage facility in New Mexico by August 16, according to the agency’s Monday notice to the state’s district court of appeals. The commission will reply to state attorney general Hector Balderas’s July 19 filing in which he challenges NRC’s June motion to dismiss the case.
The brief will be a jurisdictional riposte that skirts, for now, the plaintiff’s central argument that commercial interim storage sites run afoul of federal law. Should the court rule on that issue, it could have a jarring effect, one way or the other, on the only live effort in the U.S. to consolidate fuel from nuclear power plants.
Balderas on July 19 rejected NRC’s contention that New Mexico filed its lawsuit in the wrong court. NRC in June said that the suit, which asked a federal judge to prevent Holtec from getting a federal license to build its proposed interim storage site in Lea County, N.M., should have been filed in the D.C. circuit court of appeals per the Hobbs Act. Balderas said that that law, which ensures federal agencies all get the same standard of judicial review, didn’t apply to New Mexico’s complaints. New Mexico filed suit in March.
Meanwhile, the only other commercial interim storage site seeking a federal license took a step towards licensing last week. NRC staff July 28 recommended that the commission grant Orano-Waste Control Specialists (WCS) joint venture Interim Storage Partners a license to build its proposed site at the WCS low-level waste disposal facility in Andrews County, Texas.
That site, too, faces staunch opposition in the Lone Star State.
NRC has said that it should make a final decision on the proposed Texas site in September. As for Holtec, commission chair Christopher Hanson told members of Congress July 14 that his agency would make a call on its proposed site in January.
