Latest news with #YuccaMountain
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Nuclear waste in Texas? What to know about latest Supreme Court ruling that allows it
In a recent ruling, the Supreme Court has made it easier to consider the possibility of nuclear waste storage on the Texas-New Mexico border. The high court rejected challenges to a nuclear waste storage site in the area on Wednesday, June 18, marking a victory for the federal government after a decade of legal wrangling by the state of Texas and the oil industry. The ruling, in a 6-3 decision, noted that they cannot challenge the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's approval of the site because they "hadn't sufficiently participated in the commission's licensing proceedings." Three conservative justices − Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito − dissented. The Texas and oil industry objected, to no avail, to the waste being stored above ground in the Permian Basin, a prominent oil field region known for its underpopulated, wide-open spaces in southwestern Texas. In 2021, the commission approved temporary storage sites in Texas due to nuclear power plants running out of space, and the planned permanent underground storage facility in Nevada's Yucca Mountain. The federal government argued the storage was temporary while a permanent location was constructed. According to USA reporting, Nevada's Yucca Mountain was the only authorized site where the Department of Energy could permanently store spent nuclear fuel; the Obama administration effectively nixed the project over political and environmental concerns. No timeline was provided for when such waste could be stored in the region. The Trump administration publicly defended the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's authority to approve temporary sites and noted it will try to revive the Yucca Mountain option as a place to store nuclear waste. Beginning in the 1950s, the U.S. began large-scale nuclear power generation using nuclear fuel in reactors, along with an ongoing political debate over the disposal of spent fuel, once it can no longer efficiently generate electricity. The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act established a permanent repository for nuclear power plant waste, which is still considered hazardous for thousands of years. USA Today contributed to this story. Kristian Jaime is the Top Story Reporter for the El Paso Times and is reachable at Kjaime@ This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Nuclear waste in Texas? What to know about Supreme Court ruling
CBS News
3 days ago
- Politics
- CBS News
Supreme Court rules against Texas in suit over nuclear waste storage
Washington — The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled against the state of Texas and a group of landowners who challenged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's approval of a private company's plan to temporarily store thousands of metric tons of nuclear waste at a facility in the state. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a decision for a 6-3 court in the case of NRC v. Texas that neither Texas nor a land developer were parties to the commission's licensing proceeding, and therefore are not entitled to obtain judicial review. How to address the problem of nuclear waste has been complicated by politics since the advent of nuclear power last century. In 1982, Congress enacted a law requiring the federal government to establish a permanent facility to store spent nuclear fuel. Yucca Mountain in Nevada was later selected to house this repository. But the site hasn't yet been established amid pushback from the state, and the project was halted during the Obama administration. It's unclear whether the Trump administration will seek to restart the Yucca Mountain project. The issue of where to put the increasing amount of spent fuel remains. More than 90,000 metric tons of nuclear waste from commercial power plants are currently privately stored, both at or away from nuclear reactor sites, according to the Government Accountability Office. Plants continue to generate an additional 2,000 metric tons of spent fuel each year, as nearly 20% of the nation's electricity is supplied by nuclear energy, according to the Department of Energy. In September 2021, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a license to a company called Interim Storage Partners that allowed it to store 5,000 metric tons, and up to 40,000 metric tons, of nuclear waste in dry-cask, above-ground storage for up to 40 years. The facility would be built in Andrews County, Texas, located west of Dallas and near the New Mexico border. The area is already home to a disposal site for low-level radioactive waste. Before the commission granted the license, the state submitted comments opposing the storage site and warned against housing spent nuclear fuel on a "concrete pad" above Texas' Permian Basin, where 250,000 active oil and gas wells capture 40% of the nation's oil reserves. Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas Commission on Environmental Equality did not try to intervene during the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's proceedings. But other groups did try to object, including a company that owns land in the Permian Basin, though its request was denied by the commission. The state and landowners asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to review the government's license to Interim Storage Partners, and the court allowed the legal battle to proceed. The 5th Circuit also ruled that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission did not have the authority to issue a license that let nuclear waste to be held at privately owned facilities offsite from where the spent fuel was generated. Whether the commission could allow private companies to temporarily store nuclear waste was only one part of the dispute before the Supreme Court. The first, key issue for the justices to weigh was whether Texas and landowners who challenged the license to Interim Storage Partners could do so in the first place, since they didn't intervene at an earlier stage in the licensing process. Spent fuel from a nuclear reactor can remain radioactive and pose health risks for thousands of years, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
