Nuke waste project planning enters next phase
With public comment period over, regulators will evaluate viability, environmental impact
Over four months, voices of opposition coalesced into a chorus, their refrain reverberating throughout the state. Not in our backyard, they said. And yet, for stakeholders on both sides of the proposal to build storage for high-level nuclear waste in southeastern New Mexico, the battle is just beginning.
At 11:59 p.m. Monday, the public comments phase on New Jersey-based energy company Holtec International’s bid ended. Before it did, an unlikely coalition — environmentalists, titans of industry and lawmakers — had lent their voices to the opposition’s reprise.
Meanwhile, the project’s proponents continued to tout its broad economic benefits — not only for southeastern New Mexico, but for the state as a whole.
“It’s a niche that we’ve found in southeast New Mexico and a very important one,” said John Heaton, a former state representative from Carlsbad who spearheaded development of the nuclear waste disposal project for a remote desert site.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an independent federal agency that oversees the commercial nuclear industry, spent the past months hosting a series of public hearings statewide and receiving online and handwritten comments.
As of Tuesday, the group had received more than 2,300 public comments, the overwhelming majority in opposition to the project, said David McIntyre, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman.
McIntyre said he wouldn’t have a definitive tally for a few weeks.
What follows will be a two-year analysis of the project’s environmental impacts and technical viability.
Over the next year, NRC officials will analyze public comments, making specific note of any potential environmental impacts. They’ll then prepare a draft environmental impact statement, to be released next summer.
That draft will be opened for public comments, and a final environmental impact statement will be released a year later.
At the same time, another team will look at the technical specifications of the plan — also a two-year process.
Between now and Sep. 14, affected parties can request a hearing to contest the plan.
In March 2017, Holtec applied for a 40-year license to build a first-of-itskind, short-term repository for a vast cache of the nation’s spent nuclear fuel rods.
If approved, the 300-acre Lea County facility, located on about 1,000 acres halfway between Carlsbad and Hobbs, would be cleared to store 8,680 metric tons of uranium just beneath the earth’s surface in thick concreteand stainless steel-reinforced canisters.
Ultimately, though, the facility’s storage capacity would be about 20 times that, or about 173,000 metric tons — large enough to house all of the nation’s commercial nuclear waste.
Planners estimate about 100 temporary jobs would be created during construction along with about 100 permanent jobs once the facility is up and running, with salaries ranging from $60,000 to $80,000 a year.
The state and host communities also would share an incentive payment.
Opponents fear that in the absence of a long-term plan to deal with waste from the nation’s nuclear power industry — the long-planned Yucca Mountain project in Nevada is stalled for the foreseeable future — Holtec’s “short-term solution” could become New Mexico’s long-term burden.
During the public comments phase, opposition came from all corners of the state.
In mid-June, about 300 members of the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association cast a unanimous vote opposing the project, citing concerns about radioactive material seeping into the surface and groundwater so vital to the industry’s stability.
“If the nuclear waste has an accident on a road or highway anywhere near a ranch, it’s going to have significant impacts,” said Caren Cowan, the trade group’s executive director. “We’ve already got (the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, near Carlsbad, which stores nuclear waste generated by government facilities). Why does New Mexico need to be the home for more of this stuff ?”
The association represents about 1,500 cattle ranchers statewide.
City councils in Albuquerque, Las Cruces, Jal and Lake Arthur passed similar resolutions.
Meanwhile, environmentalists and nuclear watchdogs continued to decry Holtec’s plan to transport the spent fuel across the country via rail.
On Monday, Heaton, the former state legislator, espoused the plan’s safety and called critics’ concerns “emotional,” “nonfactual,” and “hyperbolic,” pledging to push forward.
“At this point I’m convinced about the safety and security,” he said, “but I’m just one person and many also need to be convinced.”