NM-MI-UT Amici Brief to SCOTUS, in support of Beyond Nuclear’s Petition for a Writ of Certiorari

[Tee shirt design by Noel Marquez, co-founder of Alliance for Environmental Strategies in southeastern New Mexico.]

On December 4, 2025, the States of New Mexico, Michigan, and Utah submitted an Amici Brief to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), in support of Beyond Nuclear’s Petition for a Writ of Cert.

NM and MI — states currently led by Democratic governors and state attorneys general — co-signed an Amici Brief to SCOTUS in early 2025, in the lead up to oral arguments re: NRC v. TX, concerning the Interim Storage Partners, LLC (ISP) CISF, targeted at Waste Control Specialists, LLC national “low-level” radioactive waste dump in Andrews County, TX. NM and MI opposed NRC’s license approval for the ISP CISF.

ISP would be located 0.3 miles upstream from the NM state line, and just several miles from Eunice, NM. ISP’s CISF would store up to 40,000 metric tons of highly radioactive waste.

Holtec’s CISF site is just 40-some miles west of ISP’s CISF site.

UT joined with several other states led by Republican governors and state AGs, also submitting Amici Briefs to SCOTUS earlier this year re: NRC v. TX. These several Republican-led states also opposed NRC’s license approval for ISP’s CISF.

See all the Amici Briefs filed in early 2025, opposing ISP’s CISF, in NRC v. TX.

Unfortunately, SCOTUS never addressed the merits or substance of Beyond Nuclear’s legal arguments in NRC v. TX. SCOTUS simply issued a procedural ruling, that the State of Texas and Fasken Land and Minerals, Ltd. lacked the legal standing to bring their SCOTUS appeal (despite Fasken striving for a decade to establish such standing in the NRC licensing proceedings, as well as in multiple U.S. Courts of Appeals!)

On December 2, 2025, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Department of Justice waived their right to respond to Beyond Nuclear’s cert. petition.

Beyond Nuclear’s cert. petition was submitted to SCOTUS on October 31, 2025. It seeks for our appeal against consistently adverse rulings against us by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, regarding Beyond Nuclear v. NRC, our case opposing Holtec’s consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) for up to 173,600 metric tons of highly radioactive waste, targeting the Eddy and Lea Counties borderlands, midway between the county seats of Carlsbad and Hobbs, in southeastern New Mexico.

Beyond Nuclear and environmental allies, as well as Fasken Land and Minerals, Ltd., have opposed Holtec’s CISF since before the company filed its license application (LA) to NRC, for permission to construct and operate the facility. Holtec announced its LA on April 1, 2017 — Nuclear Fools Day — in a congressional hearing room on Capitol Hill.

The State of New Mexico began to officially oppose Holtec’s CISF upon the inauguration of current Democratic governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, on Jan. 1, 2018. (The previous Republican governor supported the dump.) A very-hard won New Mexico state law prohibiting the CISF without the state’s consent was signed into law by Gov. Lujan Grisham on Saint Patrick’s Day, 2023. (The State of Texas enacted a similar, hard-won law against the ISP CISF in September 2021, just days before NRC rubber stamped its approval on ISP’s LA.)

If either Holtec’s or ISP’s CISF were to open, it would launch unprecedented numbers of highly radioactive waste shipments, by train, by truck, and/or by barge, on the rails, roadways, and surface waters in many states in the Lower 48. Critics have long dubbed such high-risk shipments as Mobile Chornobyls, Floating Fukushimas, Dirty Bombs on Wheels, and Three Mile Islands in Transit, in terms of their catastrophic risks, as from “accidental” (that is, calculated gambles gone bad — the nuclear industry and its friends in government know full well the risks involved, so “accidents” would not really be unforeseen) fires, crashes, underwater submersions, or even intentional attacks.

Even “incident-free” or “routine” shipments have long been dubbed Mobile X-ray Machines That Can’t Be Turned Off, regarding inescapable, hazardous gamma and neutron radiation emissions. Externally contaminated shipping containers would make such emissions even worse, above “permissible” or “allowable” levels.

Also on Dec. 4, 2025, Holtec’s outside counsel filed an Amicus Brief with SCOTUS, urging it not to grant cert. to Beyond Nuclear. Law360 reported on this, as well as the NM-MI-UT Amici Brief (the article is behind a paywall).

For more info. on resistance to these and other CISFs, see Beyond Nuclear’s Centralized Storage website section.