Why a Proposed NM Nuclear Waste Storage Facility is Illegal

The proposed high-level nuclear waste site in Southeast New Mexico, at Holtec International facility, has prompted New Mexico to sue the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The state brings up concerns about health of residents, environmental issues, and economic issues. 

The storage facility is designed to be an above ground site, not a deep geological burial site that is viewed as the only way to safely store highly radioactive waste. The lawsuit also brings up the point that while the federal government states that utilities (in this case: Holtec) are responsible for storage, Holtec has said that the federal government is going to fund the facility. 

New Mexico says that the storage facility by Holtec is entirely illegal because “federal law doesn’t authorize the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to authorize this kind of consolidated facility”. To add to that, Holtec and the NRC have been able to call the facility “interim” yet cannot give an end date or future time limit on the storage site. It is not the deep geological repository that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act outlined in the 1980s.

If anything were to go wrong at the storage site, the prolific oil and gas industry that it sits in the center of could be shut down, costing the state millions of dollars in loss.