Nuclear Hotseat: CISFs@SCOTUS

On Nuclear Hotseat  Episode #730, host Libbe HaLevy interviews Beyond Nuclear’s radioactive waste specialist, Kevin Kamps, on the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruling on June 18, 2025 regarding consolidated interim storage facilities (CISFs) for highly radioactive waste, targeted at Texas and New Mexico.

Listen to the podcast here.

Libbe describes the featured interview to come during the first few minutes of the recording.

The interview itself takes place from the 18 minute 18 second mark of the podcast, to the 51 minute 28 second mark.

Libbe interviewed Kevin on June 20, 2025. The episode was published on June 24, 2025.

See revised and updated fact sheets (as well as an educational video), regarding Beyond Nuclear’s opposition to CISFs, published on the very day of the SCOTUS ruling, here.

Also see Beyond Nuclear’s press release, and related media coverage, regarding SCOTUS’s June 18, 2025 CISF ruling, here.

(Errata: Kevin mistakenly stated the fire temperature design criteria for highly radioactive waste shipping containers as 1,875 degrees Fahrenheit. The actual design criteria temperature is significantly less conservative — just 1,475 degrees F!

Diesel fuel, common in commercial transport — many to most locomotives, highway vehicles including semi-trucks, and even boats still run on it — itself burns at a hotter temperature than the design criteria.

Other combustibles being moved on roads, rails, and/or waterways burn at even much higher temperatures than diesel fuel.

As highly radioactive waste would be transported alongside such common flammables as diesel fuel, or other more high-temperature burning combustibles, the safety disconnect is clear.

Also, a large number of real world transport fire disasters have burned for much longer than the inadequate design criteria of just 30 minutes.)