Appeal to 2nd highest court against NM dumpToday, Beyond Nuclear's legal counsel, Diane Curran of Washington, D.C., and Mindy Goldstein of Atlanta, GA, initiated a lawsuit at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (logo, left). It challenges Oct. 29, 2018 and April 23, 2020 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) rulings. Those rulings were in favor of licensing Holtec International's so-called consolidated interim storage facility, targeted at southeastern New Mexico, for up to 173,600 metric tons of irradiated nuclear fuel. That is more than twice what currently exists in the country, and 2.5 times what is targeted to be dumped on Western Shoshone land at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
NRC has been flouting both the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as Amended, as well as the Administrative Procedure Act, as Beyond Nuclear has alleged since 2016. See our press release here, and legal filing here.