If there ever was a place meant to store the nation’s commercial nuclear waste, at least temporarily, it’s southeastern New Mexico, some local residents say.
John Heaton, a 78-year-old retiree from Carlsbad, belongs to the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, a coalition of volunteers that owns land in Lea County it intends to sell to a company proposing to build an underground storage site to temporarily house waste from the nation’s 99 nuclear reactors.
The alliance includes representatives from Eddy and Lea counties, and the cities of Carlsbad and Hobbs, which together sit in the heart of the Permian Basin natural gas fracking boom. The commissions of both counties, and councils of each city, have passed resolutions that support hosting nuclear waste storage.
“The tragedy of it all is when somebody mentions nuclear or plutonium, people have this image in their mind, especially older people who went through Hiroshima,” Heaton told the Washington Examiner. “There are groups of people who continue to promote non-factual information that just creates hysteria and all these ideas. We have been fortunate to become educated about it, which is why you see this kind of acceptance here.”
The alliance’s embrace of the concept is a stark contrast to sentiment in Nevada, where opposition to being a “dumping ground” for the nation’s commercial nuclear waste has stalled a 30-year effort to develop Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the nation’s permanent repository for nuclear waste.
Interim storage is not authorized under federal law. But a bill passed by a wide bipartisan margin in the House this month would direct the Energy Department to create a temporary storage program until Yucca Mountain is approved by regulators and funded by Congress, if it ever is.
Finding communities willing to take the radioactive waste has always been a difficult task for the U.S. government, and only two sites have been proposed for interim storage.
Holtec International, a New Jersey-based equipment supplier, is seeking a 40-year license for a storage site in Lea County, with a plan to house 120,000 tons of nuclear waste.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing the proposal and vetting it for safety, security, and environmental concerns. It also has begun holding public hearings.
Waste Control Specialists, meanwhile, wants to build a temporary nuclear storage site in Andrews County in West Texas, a project that also enjoys support from local and state officials, including Republican Rep. Mike Conaway, whose district houses the proposed location.
Supporters of the proposed projects say their experience with nuclear power, coupled with the job opportunities provided by hosting a site, outweigh their concerns of potential risks.
New Mexico, especially the part of the state Heaton comes from, knows nukes.
In 1945, the first atomic bomb was successfully tested in Alamogordo. Los Alamos weapons laboratory, where America’s first nuclear weapons were built, is also in the state.
And in southeast New Mexico, the Energy Department runs the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, which residents know by heart as its acronym, WIPP, the nation’s only underground repository for waste from America’s nuclear defense program.
“There is certainly a political will for this to happen, understanding our experience,” Sam Cobb, the 66-year-old mayor of Hobbs, told the Washington Examiner. “This is an opportunity for us to get a steady stream of revenue from what I believe is a safe process to secure spent fuel.”
New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, a Republican, has expressed support for the plan, as has Rep. Steve Pearce, also a Republican, while Democratic politicians such as Sen. Tom Udall oppose it.
“This project, with community support, would continue to cement New Mexico as a national leader in nuclear energy production, development, and disposal,” Pearce said after the House passed the bill authorizing temporary storage.
Heaton and Cobb are self-declared conservative Democrats who support “baseload” energy sources such as coal and nuclear power and welcome President Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda that seeks to exploit America’s status as the dominant world producer of natural gas.
“If you want to see a boom city, you should come to Carlsbad, N.M.,” said Heaton, who served in the state legislature for 14 years and worked on energy-related issues. “You can’t even get to town because of oil and gas right now. So with nuclear waste, we recognize the opportunity from an economic perspective, and we also recognize it is desperately needed in the country.”
Heaton projects the storage facility will create about 100 temporary construction jobs and 100 more jobs while the site is operating.
Andrews County, the Texas region primed for a waste storage site, also has experience with nuclear.
Waste Control Specialists already stores low-level radioactive waste in the county.
The company suspended its application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for building a new storage facility about a year ago, as the company sorted through ownership and financial issues. But Waste Control Specialists announced this year that it is partnering on the project with French energy giant Orano, which manages and stores nuclear waste at sites in France.
The joint venture, known as Interim Storage Partners, intends to resubmit its application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the end of June.
“We have a proven and robust technology to safely store the fuel,” Jeff Isakson, president of Interim Storage Partners, told the Washington Examiner. “Our proposal represents good progress to a solution for used fuel in the U.S, with a long-term repository being the ultimate destination. In the meantime, we are confident we can keep the fuel safe for a very long time.”
Isakson said he expects the facility to create 30 to 40 jobs while it operates.
But critics of interim storage worry the targeted final destination, Yucca Mountain, will never open. If that were to happen, the temporary facilities could become de facto permanent storage facilities, a task they would not be set up to do.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and other Democrats have already declared the House-passed bill “dead on arrival.”
“I don’t support an interim disposal site without a plan for permanent disposal, because that nuclear waste could be orphaned there indefinitely,” Udall told the Washington Examiner. “Any future nuclear waste mission in New Mexico would need broad support throughout the state as well as an independent scientific analysis ensuring its safety before I would consider supporting it.”
Udall also noted the spotty safety record of WIPP, New Mexico’s nuclear weapons waste storage plant.
In 2014, a drum containing radioactive waste blew up there, an explosion that ranked among the costliest nuclear accidents in U.S. history.
Others worry about the potential cost of interim storage, considering the resources already invested in Yucca Mountain. Spent nuclear fuel sits idle in 121 communities across 39 states, and if that waste were to be transported to temporary sites, it would have to be delivered again, likely by rail, to Yucca Mountain.
“My initial concern is that any designation of interim storage would only delay a permanent repository and it wouldn’t be significantly safer or more cost effective,” Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., told the Washington Examiner.
Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill, the author of the House-passed bill, argues interim storage is better than the current reality.
“The issue with nuclear waste is for most people it’s out of sight out of mind,” Shimkus told the Washington Examiner. “But when you have spent fuel in 121 locations in 39 states, every elected official needs to be accountable for addressing a national problem with a national solution, and doing nothing is not the right course of action.”
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act, passed by Congress in 1982 and amended five years later, directs the Energy Department to take possession of the nation’s spent nuclear fuel and dispose of it in a deep geological repository at Yucca Mountain.
The law created a Nuclear Waste Fund to pay for the federal repository by charging nuclear reactor operators a fee on the waste they produced.
Since the Obama administration blocked Yucca Mountain from opening, the federal government paid hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to utilities that own nuclear reactors and that sued for costs associated with storing waste at their sites.
Shimkus said it’s time for Congress to wrest back control.
“The interim proposal allows us to more rapidly reclaim the spent fuel and thus relieving the burden on communities by locating the fuel in places that want to perform that job,” Shimkus said.
