New Mexico officials on Tuesday briefed state lawmakers near Carlsbad, N.M., about enforcing a new state law that prohibits storage of spent nuclear fuel in the Land of Enchantment.
Passed in March, the law, SB 53, prohibits a state agency from granting permits vital to the operation of Holtec International’s proposed consolidated interim storage facility in Eddy County.
These include not only a hazardous waste permit, but also a permit for groundwater discharge during construction of the facility and a permit for on-site petroleum storage, according to slides prepared for the legislature’s Radioactive & Hazardous Materials Committee by Bruce Baizel, director for compliance and enforcement for the New Mexico Environment Department.
New Mexico’s legislative session ended in June, but the committee held what is known as an interim meeting this week at Southeast New Mexico College in Carlsbad.
Lawmakers gathered a little more than a month after a federal court sided with the state of Texas and ruled that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission cannot license commercial companies to consolidate and store spent nuclear fuel away from the reactors that generated the spent fuel. That effectively killed permits the NRC issued for interim storage to two companies: Holtec and Interim Storage Partners, a joint venture of Orano and Waste Control Specialists.
In slides prepared for Tuesday’s interim committee meeting, Bill Grantham, a New Mexico assistant attorney general, said that New Mexico’s separate federal lawsuit over interim storage, which was thrown out of court, made some of the same arguments that Texas offered in its successful lawsuit.
The local Current Argus newspaper reported Wednesday that New Mexico has not ruled out another lawsuit over commercial interim storage.
