The U.S. Supreme Court Monday denied a petition by the advocacy group Beyond Nuclear seeking to challenge the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) license approval for a Holtec International Consolidated Interim Storage Facility (CISF).
Beyond Nuclear hoped the high court would invalidate an NRC license that would allow Holtec to construct an interim waste storage in southeastern New Mexico. But the Supreme Court denied what is known as a petition for certiorari, basically asking it to review a lower court decision.
“The justices receive over 8,000 cert petitions and grant between 60 and 80 of these” annually, according to the Scotusblog website.
The Beyond Nuclear petition was among many others that were denied on a long list of orders sent out Monday. As is typical, the justices did not supply a reason to why the Oct. 31 writ of certiorari was denied.
Holtec’s license was reinstated after a landmark Supreme Court case last June where the justices ruled against a challenge to NRC’s authority to license a similar private spent fuel facility in West Texas.
While Holtec dropped its plans to use the New Mexico site, Beyond Nuclear radioactive waste specialist Kevin Kamps said Holtec’s license for an interim waste storage site still poses a threat to public safety and the environment.
Beyond Nuclear wants to prevent a similar facility being developed later down the line.
While disappointed by the decision, Kamps and Beyond Nuclear co-counsel Mindy Goldstein said in its Monday press release they were determined to fight revival of such projects.
“While we are disappointed in the Supreme Court’s decision to let the D.C. Circuit’s erroneous decision stand, we are pleased that the D.C. Circuit, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Holtec have all recognized that the law expressly prohibits storage of federally owned nuclear waste at Holtec’s facility,” Goldstein said.“Beyond Nuclear can now turn its attention to Congress to ensure our lawmakers understand the importance of permanent, safe disposal of our nation’s inventory of spent nuclear fuel,” Goldstein added.
“Even though SCOTUS’s rulings have effectively upheld the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licenses for Holtec’s consolidated interim storage facility in New Mexico, and Interim Storage Partners’ in Texas, we still hope to stop them from going forward,” Kamps said. “After all, we were previously able to stop a very similar dump of Holtec’s and the nuclear power industry’s in Utah, on the Skull Valley Goshutes Indian Reservation, despite NRC having licensed it, and the federal courts having upheld that NRC license.”
The Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, located in Tooele County, Utah, was at the forefront of a decade-long battle over a proposed storage facility for high-level nuclear waste by Private Fuel Storage (PFS), a consortium of nuclear companies.
The project faced ample opposition from state officials, tribal leaders and environmental groups. While NRC approved PFS’s license to build the facility, the Department of Interior’s (DOI) denial to a land lease and federal land necessary for transporting spent fuel derailed the project in 2006.
PFS legally challenged the DOI over the matter but failed and later abandoned its plans in 2012.