Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Democrat New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham may come from ideologically opposite sides of the spectrum, but now they have at least one gripe in common: neither is interested in hosting a nuclear waste storage facility in their state.
Abbott wrote a letter to President Donald Trump on Wednesday opposing license applications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for the consolidated interim storage of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste at the proposed Holtec and Interim Storage Partners (ISP) sites in west Texas and southeastern New Mexico.
“Allowing the interim storage of spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste at sites near the largest producing oilfield in the world will compromise the safety of the region,” he wrote in the letter, claiming the proximity to the Permian Basin — a significant economic and natural resource for the entire country, he said — would place America’s recovering economy and energy security at great risk.
Both facilities are going through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing process to operate as storage sites. While the ISP statement is in the process of receiving public comment, Holtec’s draft EIS public comment period recently ended, drawing complaints from New Mexico’s state government as well as a slew of environmental advocates.
Holtec’s facility would initially be authorized to carry 8,680 metric tons of used fuel, but could ultimately store up to 100,000 metric tons and operate for over 100 years with license renewals. ISP’s facility could store up to 5,000 metric tons and operate for 40 years.
Together, the two sites could help the Department of Energy meet its legal mandate to remove spent fuel from nuclear power plants, a process that, by law, was supposed to begin by January 1998.
Both facilities would serve only as stopgap storage solutions while the United States government figures out a plan for something permanent. Despite passing legislation decades ago to license a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, progress has been on hold since the middle of the Obama administration.
