(VOR News) – On Friday, the Supreme Court decided to step in and settle a disagreement over the planned storage of radioactive waste in rural Texas and New Mexico.
The 5th United States Circuit Supreme Court of Appeals found that the Radioactive Regulatory Commission had overreached its authority under federal law when it authorized a private company to store spent radioactive material for forty years at a West Texas dump.
The justices have stated that they will examine this ruling in greater detail. The plans for a facility that resembles the one in New Mexico will change depending on how the lawsuit turns out.
Both states’ political elites are against the facilities.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, said that his state “will not serve as a repository for nuclear waste in the Supreme Court United States.”
Up until now, the country’s efforts to establish a long-term underground storage facility have failed. The political environment surrounding this search is complicated, and one aspect of it is the ongoing push for venues for temporary storage.
At the locations of existing and previous nuclear power reactors across the nation, about 100,000 tons (90,000 metric tons) of spent fuel are accumulating; some of it dates back to the 1980s. This amount is building up at a rate of more than two thousand tons annually. Before being buried at a suitable depth, the waste was supposed to be temporarily kept.
The idea of building a national storage facility on Yucca Mountain, northwest of Las Vegas, has been met with strong opposition from most Nevadans, including government officials. With this in mind, the initiative has been completely shelved.
The ongoing disagreement over nuclear waste storage is one of thirteen issues that the justices have scheduled for their upcoming term, which begins on Monday.
Other notable cases include an appeal by a Texas death row inmate whose execution was last-minutely delayed by the supreme court in July, and a move by gun makers to end a legal dispute in which Mexico is attempting to hold them accountable for gun violence south of the border. These two examples are remarkable.
At the start of next year, the justices in the NRC lawsuit will hear arguments on two questions.
The National Research Council (NRC) asserts that because states have chosen not to engage in the commission’s proceedings, they have relinquished their ability to challenge licensing decisions.
The Federal Appeals and Supreme Courts in Denver and Washington also ruled in its favor.
All of the cases were allowed to continue by the Fifth Circuit. The second question concerns the commission’s jurisdiction to grant permits for facilities that provide temporary storage in compliance with federal law.
Unlikely partners, environmental groups and the state of Texas depended on a 2022 Supreme Court decision holding that Congress must proceed cautiously when granting an agency the power to regulate a matter of significant national interest.
In its decision for Texas, the Fifth Circuit Supreme Court of Appeals found that the issue of how to dispose of the country’s nuclear waste is a “major question” that needs immediate action from Congress.
As a result of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the commission has long-standing jurisdiction to address nuclear waste, which the Vice President Joe Biden administration has informed the Supreme Court about.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has authorized Interim Storage Partners LLC to run a facility in the state of Texas. This facility can hold up to 5,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel rods from power plants in addition to 231 million tons of other radioactive waste.
The facility would be built in close proximity to an existing Andrews County disposal site for the purpose of getting rid of low-level trash, which includes radioactively exposed things like protective gear. The area in Andrews County is about 350 miles (563.27 kilometers) west of Dallas, close to the Texas–New Mexico state line.
The commission authorized Holtec International to run a temporary storage facility in Lea County, California, which is near Carlsbad in the state’s southeast. The license is opposed by other New Mexico officials and Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham. Moreover, that license has been revoked by the Fifth Circuit.
By the middle of the following year, we hope to have a decision.
SOURCE: AP
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