Rail routes to CISFs in the Permian Basin

This route map appeared in the license application from Holtec International for its consolidated interim storage facility targeting southeastern New Mexico.

An almost identical route map appeared in Interim Storage Partners’ (ISP) license application for its CISF targeting western Texas. The only difference between the two route maps was the CISF destination, and the two are but 40-some miles apart. From a national perspective, this means the routing to either Holtec or ISP would be nearly to entirely identical, except for diverging routes in the immediate locality of the proposed CISFs.

Note that the map above accounts for only four reactors out of 131 total in the U.S. They are the one reactor site at Maine Yankee, and a three-reactor site at San Onofre, California. The other 128 reactor sites across the U.S. are not accounted for, leaving the false impression that the rest of the country is in the clear. The WIEB map below shows this is not the case. So too does another ISP map, immediately below.

ISP included this additional rail routing map in its license application, essentially admitting that any and all mainline railways in the U.S. are fair game for shipping highly radioactive wastes to its CISF in Texas.

The Western Interstate Energy Board (WIEB) identified most-likely rail routing for shipments bound to ISP’s CISF, in its November 2020 comments submitted to NRC on the ISP Draft EIS. See this post for more information about WIEB’s insights.