Oyster Creek Stakeholder Forum Leaves Locals with Even More Renewed Fears

As reported by Tap Into Barnegut/Wareton [New Jersey].

Holtec International was awarded the license to Oyster Creek atomic reactor and ownership of its irradiated nuclear fuel by a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) rubber-stamp. Holtec has also proposed to transport the highly radioactive wastes to southeastern New Mexico, for so-called "consolidated interim storage" (CIS). NRC is poised to rubber-stamp that, too.

But as with the Oyster Creek license transfer, there is widespread resistance to the Holtec CIS Facility opening in NM.

MA AG Healey sues federal nuclear regulators over Plymouth plant transfer

As reported by the Boston Globe.

Holtec International has also proposed "temporarily storing" a grand total of 173,600 metric tons of commercial irradiated nuclear fuel at a site mid-way between Hobbs and Carlsbad, New Mexico.

The license tranfer from Entergy to Holtec at Pilgrim atomic reactor in Massachusetts, would include ownership, title, and liability for the irradiated nuclear fuel stored on-site.

Holtec's grand scheme is to ultimately transport Pilgrim's highly radioactive waste to its "consolidated interim storage facility" in NM.

House Subcommittee Approves Yucca Mountain Dump and Consolidated Interim Storage Facility Bill

As reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

But not only would the bill speed the opening of the Yucca Mountain dump, targeted at Western Shoshone Indian land in Nevada. It would also authorize the U.S. Department of Energy taking ownership to commercial irradiated nuclear fuel at consolidated interim storage sites -- as currently targeted at Hispanic areas of New Mexico (Holtec International/Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance) and Texas (Interim Storage Partners, including Waste Control Specialists, Orano of France, and Nuclear Assurance Corporation) in the Permian Basin. This would be a major reversal in decades-long U.S. high-level radioactive waste policy and law. It would create the very high risk of CISFs becoming de facto permanent, surface storage, "parking lot dumps." DOE has itself warned, in its Yucca Environmental Impact Statement, that surface storage, combined with loss of institutional control over a long enough period of time, would result in container failure, and consequent catastrophic releases of hazardous radioactivity into the environment.

Update on September 26, 2019 by admin

E&E/Greenwire also reported on this story (behind pay wall, but free subscriptions are available).

Update on September 30, 2019 by admin

As reported, U.S. Reps. Shimkus (R-IL) and Walden (R-OR), the Ranking Republicans on the Environment and Climate Change Subcommittee, and the Energy & Commerce Committee, respectively, in the U.S. House, are gleeful about the prospect of opening high-level radioactive waste dumps in Nevada, New Mexico, and/or Texas, if Shimkus's H.R. 2699, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019, becomes law.

Plan to transport nuclear waste to West Texas draws concern

As reported by the Houston Chronicle.

Beyond Nuclear's Brief on Appeal of LBP-19-07 (NRC ASLB ruling on WCS/ISP CISF proceeding)

Beyond Nuclear's Brief on Appeal of LBP-19-07 (U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Atomic Safety and Licensing Board ruling on Waste Control Specialists/Interim Storage Partners Consolidated Interim Storage Facility proceeding), linked here.

Beyond Nuclear's Brief on Appeal was filed by its legal counsel, Diane Curran and Mindy Goldstein.

Curran is an attorney at Harmon, Curran, Spielberg, & Eisenberg, LLP in Washington, DC.

Goldstein is an attorney at Emory University School of Law in Atlanta, GA; she serves as the director of the Turner Environmental Law Clinic there.