NUCLEAR WASTEU.S. Supreme Court Takes Up Texas Nuclear Waste Disposal Case
The case could establish the nation’s first independent repository for spent nuclear fuel in West Texas, despite the objections of state leaders.
This story is published in partnership with Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter here.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear arguments in a case that could pave the way for Texas to host the nation’s first independent disposal ground for spent nuclear fuel.
Currently, thousands of tons of high-level radioactive waste are stored on site at nuclear power plants across the country, awaiting a permanent national disposal site, which federal authorities have tried to develop for decades without success.
But even as Texas touts plans to become the nation’s next-generation nuclear capital, its leaders remain unwilling to take in its most potent nuclear refuse. The state, along with a local oil company, sued the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2021 over its licensing of a temporary storage site for up to 11 million pounds of spent uranium fuel in West Texas, at a facility owned by Waste Control Specialists, which already accepts low-level nuclear waste.
“The NRC’s abuse of authority must be stopped,” said Monica Perales, a Midland-based attorney for Fasken Oil and Ranch, a plaintiff in the case. “If not now, then all the spent nuclear fuel in America and maybe even foreign waste will end up in Texas and New Mexico indefinitely.”
A panel of federal judges ruled in favor of Texas in 2023, and the Supreme Court agreed to review the case upon appeal from the NRC.
A spokesperson for the NRC said the agency does not comment on pending litigation. It has argued that it does have authority to license the facility and that plaintiffs failed to undergo the agency’s internal appeals process before seeking relief from the courts.
Waste Control Specialists first filed its application in 2016 to receive high-level nuclear waste and store it in concrete casks on a temporary basis.
The Consolidated Interim Storage Facility is “designed to store spent nuclear fuel until a permanent repository is constructed and operating,” the application said. “The initial request for a license is for a term of 40 years.”
A permanent storage facility, in contrast, would be designed to contain waste for more than 100,000 years with much higher engineering standards.
