Minerals Company Fires Back at NRC Dismissal Motions in Interim Storage Suit

A minerals company is fighting to stay involved with Texas’ lawsuit against a proposed interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel and wants the suit to stay in the Fifth Circuit, court papers filed this week show.

Texas-based Fasken Land and Minerals, a longtime opponent of Interim Storage Partners’ proposed site in Andrews, Texas, argued in a Monday filing with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that its petition should remain on the docket alongside state Attorney General Ken Paxton’s because the state’s lawsuit was the first timely court challenge to NRC’s September decision to license the proposed site.

“[S]ince Texas filed its petition in this Court within ten days of the NRC’s final order issuing the ISP license and this was the first petition filed with respect to that order, this Court is the appropriate venue for these matters,” Fasken said in its filing. 

ISP, a joint venture between Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists (WCS) and Orano USA, plans to build its interim storage site at WCS’s existing low-level waste disposal facility in Andrews. NRC wants Fasken’s petition in the Fifth Circuit moved to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, where Fasken is already involved in a separate lawsuit against the ISP site. 

The first thing the Fifth Circuit will rule on in the Texas lawsuit is the NRC’s motion to dismiss the case entirely. That might take until well after New Year’s, as Texas has an unopposed motion before the court to delay a key filing in the case until February.

NRC is facing a multi-pronged legal challenge to its decision to license the ISP site. In addition to the Fifth Circuit and D.C. Circuit Court suits, New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas has also sued the agency in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.