Holtec International has canceled plans to build an interim nuclear waste storage facility in New Mexico, months after an U.S. Supreme Court ruling that made way for such projects in New Mexico and Texas.
“After discussions with our longtime partner in the HI-STORE project, the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance [ELEA], and due to the untenable path forward for used fuel storage in New Mexico, we mutually agreed upon cancelling the agreement,” Holtec said in a statement emailed Thursday to Exchange Monitor.
“This allows for ELEA to work to redevelop the property in a manner that fits their needs and allows Holtec to work with other states who are amenable to used fuel storage based on the recent DOE [Department of Energy] work on public education and outreach.”
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D), who has opposed the Consolidated Interim Storage Facility, released a statement on Holtec’s cancellation.
“I’m glad that Holtec heard our strenuous objections and decided that fighting to put more nuclear waste in New Mexico was a losing proposition,” Lujan Grisham said in a statement emailed Thursday to Exchange Monitor. “In 2023, New Mexico passed a law banning state agencies from granting permits or contracts for high-level nuclear waste storage. We are firmly resolved to protecting our state from becoming a nuclear dumping ground.”
In June, the Supreme Court ruled that Texas and Fasken Land and Minerals were not eligible to challenge the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) license issued to Interim Storage Partners (ISP) for a private nuclear waste storage facility in West Texas.
The landmark case was seen to make way for companies to construct temporary waste storages. Holtec celebrated the court’s decision, as the company was in a similar situation to ISP’s, but in New Mexico.
The proposed site for the storage facility near Carlsbad, N.M. was previously backed by former Republican New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez. However, Martinez’s successor Grisham has strongly opposed the project. The New Mexico spent fuel facility was a highly contested project at the local and state level for many years.
In March 2023, New Mexico passed a state law banning the storage of spent nuclear fuel in the state. Despite that NRC approved Holtec’s 40-year license to operate a Consolidated Interim Storage Facility for spent fuel in May 2023.
Holtec’s NRC license was thrown out by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in March 2024 due to the then ongoing litigation surrounding the NRC v. Texas case. Since the June ruling, the company expected its license to be reinstated.
The then proposed facility was initially licensed to contain 500 canisters, storing around 8,700 metric tons of spent fuel. Holtec envisioned future plans to expand storage up to as many as 10,000 canisters.
Holtec first proposed the Consolidated Interim Storage Facility in 2015 on property just 12 miles from the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the nation’s only underground disposal site for transuranic waste.
The proposed interim storage facilities in Texas and New Mexico were to accept spent fuel from on-site nuclear reactor plant sites sprinkled across the country. The interim storage facilities were to hold the waste until whatever time a permanent disposal site, akin to the cancelled Yucca Mountain project in Nevada, should become available.
Critics of such interim storage, however, contend such sites could end up as permanent homes for the waste. The 2023 New Mexico legislation essentially banned interim storage until a permanent repository is available.
Holtec argued three years ago that the interim site’s license would stipulate it would only be for interim storage.
Since the current Donald Trump administration took office in January there has been increased interest in the long-discussed idea of recycling some of the nation’s spent fuel for future electric power generation.