Oral Arguments, Beyond Nuclear v. NRC: Report Back

[Tee shirt design by Noel Marquez, co-founder, Alliance for Environmental Strategies, southeastern New Mexico. The design features New Mexico’s state colors of gold and turqoise, the Zia Pueblo Sun symbol, and the shape of the state.]

On March 5th, opponents appealing the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) approval of Holtec International’s license application for highly radioactive waste consolidated interim storage in New Mexico presented oral arguments at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

This included Beyond Nuclear (represented by D.C.-based attorney Diane Curran); Iowa-based attorney Wally Taylor (representing Sierra Club and Don’t Waste Michigan, et al., a six-group national grassroots environmental coalition*); and Fasken Land and Minerals, Ltd. and Permian Basin Land and Royalty Owners (Fasken/PBLRO, represented by Allan Kanner of Kanner & Whiteley in New Orleans).

The NRC, the Nuclear Energy Institute (the industry’s trade association, as well as lobbying and public relations HQ in Washington, D.C.), and Holtec argued in favor of the dump.

Listen to the audio recording of the oral arguments here.

There is no set schedule for when the three-judge panel will publish its ruling. (In Don’t Waste Michigan v. NRC, oral arguments were held in November 2022, and the D.C. Circuit Court panel issued its ruling in January 2023.)

This specific case (and a closely related one in Texas) has been eight years in the making, although resistance to CISFs (called by different names in the past, such as Monitored Retrievable Storage Sites, Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations, Away-From-Reactor Storage, etc.) dates back decades. Critics have referred to them, disparagingly, as de facto permanent parking lot dumps.

A similar dump, Interim Storage Partners’ (ISP) CISF at Waste Control Specialists’ national “low-level” radioactive waste dump, some 40 miles to the east of Holtec’s, immediately upon the New Mexico state line (just 0.3 miles away) but across the border in Andrews County, Texas, has been blocked by the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which ruled in favor of Fasken/PBLRO and the State of Texas’s appeal of NRC’s approval of the ISP construction and operation license application. However, the dump proponents have appealed en banc to the 5th Circuit, calling for reconsideration, throwing the case into limbo for the time being.

Media coverage of the March 5th oral arguments has included: Santa Fe New Mexican; Carlsbad Current-Argus; ExchangeMonitor; Law360;  E&E News; (These articles may be behind paywalls.)

*Don’t Waste Michigan, et al. includes: CITIZENS’ ENVIRONMENTAL COALITION (CEC, of New York), CITIZENS FOR ALTERNATIVES TO CHEMICAL CONTAMINATION (CACC, of Michigan), NUCLEAR ENERGY INFORMATION SERVICE (NEIS, of Illinois), SAN LUIS OBISPO MOTHERS FOR PEACE (SLOMFP, of California) , and NUCLEAR ISSUES STUDY GROUP (NISG of New Mexico, renamed DEMAND NUCLEAR ABOLITION, DNA).