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.