CISFs@SCOTUS: Fasken, Texas Submit Briefs

[Photo from NRC’s Feb. 2017 environmental scoping meeting in Andrews, TX for the ISP CISF, compliments of No Nuclear Waste Aqui.]

Fasken Land & Minerals filed its Brief with the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), by the Jan. 15 deadline. So too did the State of Texas. Our strange bedfellow allies, a fossil fuel/ranching company, and ruby red Republican Gov. Abbott and AG Paxton, are the lead Respondents, countering the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Interim Storage Partners’ decade-long scheme to shove high-level radioactive waste dumps down the throat of the Permian Basin. Friend of the Court Briefs, opposed to both ISP’s Consolidated Interim Storage Facility, and Holtec’s in New Mexico, are due Jan. 22. Beyond Nuclear, Sierra Club, a national grassroots environmental coalition, and others, will meet that deadline. We have fought these particular dumps since 2016.

If opened, one or both of these CISFs would launch by far the largest highly radioactive waste shipping campaign in U.S. history. Many thousands of shipments of irradiated nuclear fuel, and highly radioactive Greater-Than-Class-C waste, would travel by rail, waterway, and road, through many states.

Both ISP and Holtec assumed Yucca Mountain, Nevada — Western Shoshone land — will someday serve as a national permanent disposal repository. Even though this is a false assumption, NRC approved the CISF licenses based upon it. NRC is supposed to be the unbiased, objective, neutral “judge” in the Yucca Mountain licensing proceeding, which has been long suspended. Apparently, NRC has already made up its mind, even before the proceeding has taken place, to approve the Yucca dump, as well. But the Western Shoshone, State of Nevada, and a thousand environmental groups remain vigilantly opposed to the Yucca dump.