Is Holtec pulling out of New Mexico?

[Tee shirt design by Noel Marquez, co-founder of Alliance for Environmental Strategies (AFES).]

August 14, 2025 article by Adrian Hedden in the Carlsbad Current-Argus.

The article reports on a recent letter from Holtec International to its southeastern New Mexico business partners, the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance.

The letter reads, in part, as reported:

“Unfortunately, the passage of state legislation that effectively prohibits the construction of the CISF, combined with the continued public opposition expressed by New Mexico’s current administration, has made the project impossible in the near future,” read the letter signed by William F. Gill, Holtec vice president and senior counsel. (emphasis added)

New Mexico passed SB53 (Senate Bill 53) on March 17, 2023. The state legislature passed it, after two previous attempts, and Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed it into law within hours. It was very hard won.

Beyond Nuclear has fought Holtec’s consolidated interim storage facility (CISF), for up to 173,600 metric tons of irradiated nuclear fuel, since the company applied for an NRC construction and operating license on Nuclear Fool’s Day, April 1, 2017.

Beyond Nuclear had fought the entire CISF concept, for many years before, including at the Skull Valley Goshutes Indian Reservation in Western Utah. Although NRC had approved the license there, as well, that dump never broke ground.

Holtec would have provided 4,000 containers for high-level radioactive waste storage, for Private Fuel Storage, LLC, a consortium of more than a dozen nuclear utilities, that targeted Skull Valley.

As at Skull Valley, Holtec’s New Mexico CISF scheme has obtained an NRC license, that has, thus far anyway, been upheld by the federal courts. We hope to nonetheless stop the Holtec CISF, as well as the Interim Storage Partners CISF, 40-some miles to the east of Holtec’s site, in Andrews County, Texas, despite court-backed NRC license approval.

Beyond Nuclear also fought the entire CISF concept at the Blue Ribbon Commission for America’s Nuclear Future, from 2010 to 2012.

The state laws in NM and Texas (approved in September 2021, with just three dissenting votes in the entire state legislature) opposing the CISFs were very hard won, and are now clearly vitally important, given federal decision makers’ support for the two dumps thus far.