Supreme Court wrestles with dispute over nuclear waste storage in Texas
The case focuses on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s approval of a project to store spent nuclear fuel at a remote site in southwestern Texas.
Empty nuclear waste shipping containers in front of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., in 2014.Susan Montoya Bryan / AP file
WASHINGTON — The shadow of the long-stalled proposed nuclear waste facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, loomed over Supreme Court proceedings Wednesday as the justices weighed a dispute over the federal government's decision to approve a temporary storage site in Texas.
The nine justices heard oral arguments on whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission correctly allowed a company called Interim Storage Partners to store spent nuclear fuel in Andrews County, Texas, for up to 40 years.
The demand for the facility is largely because the Yucca Mountain project, which the federal government spent years and billions of dollars developing as a permanent storage site, has never been completed amid local opposition.
Despite being effectively killed during the Obama administration, Yucca Mountain is by law still considered to be the only long-term solution for permanent storage.
The question of whether the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has the power to authorize a temporary, privately owned storage site that could effectively end up being permanent lingered in the background of the argument.
"It's a hole in the ground," Justice Neil Gorsuch said of Yucca Mountain. As a result, any interim storage site is not temporary "in any meaningful sense," he added.
Justice Samuel Alito noted that the 40-year license for the Texas site could potentially be renewed, maybe indefinitely.
"Where is the incentive to go forward, to do what Congress wanted to have done, which is to establish a permanent facility?" he asked.
But the fraught political question of where to store nuclear waste is not the key question before the court. It is possible the court will dispose of the case by finding that Texas and others who challenged the proposal could not bring their claims because they had failed to intervene at an earlier stage, which several justices indicated was their view.
If the court concludes the challengers can intervene, it is unclear how it would rule on the scope of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's authority.
The agency maintains that under the Atomic Energy Act, it can order spent nuclear fuel to be transported across the country and held “temporarily” at a different, privately owned site from where the fuel was used.
