It’s touching, in a way. Texas has a paltry federal presence, no income tax, a right-to-work law, a Republican governor, and a GOP-majority legislature. New Mexico is a ward of Washington (a better name for it would be D.C. West), gleefully allows “public” unions to run state government, and has kept the Democratic Party dominant for nine decades.
It’s doesn’t get much redder than the Lone Star State. It doesn’t get much bluer than the Land of Enchantment. Yet “leaders” of the Mutt and Jeff neighbors have chosen the same strategy to handle the possibility of temporary-storage facilities for spent nuclear fuel (SNF) in their states: panic.
Legislation. Lawsuits. Nasty accusations about U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) decisions. It’s getting ugly in the Southwest, and the orgy of obstinacy impacts the whole country.
SNF is the leftovers from atomic-power plants. Fission reactors use “metal fuel rods that contain small ceramic pellets of enriched uranium oxide,” collected into “assemblies.” No one questions that SNF is, on its own, extremely dangerous stuff. That’s why it is deposited (and transported) in daunting, high-tech mausoleums, which geochemist James Conca notes are “typically constructed of one or more shells of steel, cast iron, and reinforced concrete to provide leak containment and radiation shielding.”
Whatever the prospects of nuclear-generated electricity in America’s 21st century, SNF, located all over the nation, needs a permanent home. The feds promised to build one, but back in 1987, when Congress picked a desolate spot in Nye County, Nevada for the “dump” site, the Silver State launched a blistering assault of highly effective NIMBYism. The intransigence, commanded by Harry Reid, ultimately succeeded. Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden walked away from the more than $10 billion — no one knows the exact, inflation-adjusted figure — spent studying Yucca Mountain. Despite its statutory and contractual obligations, the U.S. Department of Energy’s current SNF policy is essentially nothing. The fantasy of “consent-based siting” will prove as ineffective as the Yucca Mountain debacle.
So for another two or three (if not four or five) decades, something must be done with SNF, and the best idea is a consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) or two. That’s where Texas and New Mexico enter the story. Last September, Interim Storage Partners received a federal construction-and-operation license for a CISF on the east side of the border, and it looks quite likely than to the west, Holtec International will follow.
The region couldn’t be better-suited for SNF. Scant rain. Low seismic activity. Enviable population density. (Provided you’re a hermit.) No mudslides, hurricanes, or tornadoes. Substantial local support.
There’s a pesky obstacle in the way of all this SNF problem-solving, though: Wine moms fear anything associated with the word “nuclear.” Enough said.
Governor Greg Abbott thundered that he will “not let Texas become America’s dumping ground for deadly radioactive waste.” (Last year, Austin overwhelmingly backed an unconstitutional ban on “the storage or disposal of high-level radioactive waste.”) Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham charged that the “NRC is effectively choosing profit over public interest,” and pledged that New Mexico “will not become a dumping ground for the nation’s spent nuclear fuel due to Congress’s failure to identify a permanent disposal solution for commercial nuclear waste.”
At the federal level, the queer clique of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM), U.S. Rep. August Plfuger (R-TX), and U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-NM) has introduced legislation prohibiting “the use of federal funds from being used to carry out any activities that would lead to the development of an interim storage facility owned or operated by a private company.”
In 1979, political scientist Aaron Wildavsky declared: “How extraordinary! … The richest, longest-lived, best protected, most resourceful civilization, with the highest degree of insight into its own technology, is on its way to becoming the most frightened.” That was the year of Three Mile Island — and the Home of the Brave’s meltdown of confidence in science and engineering has only intensified since.
But look beyond the craven reelection tactics. With the feds wholly incapable of meeting the SNF challenge, profit-seeking entities have offered a realistic, safe, market-oriented alternative. And if their “interim” facilities eventually become permanent, so what? The account set up to fund the Yucca Mountain repository has a balance in excess of $44 billion. Why not pay Interim Storage Partners and Holtec International to keep the stuff forever?
The unhindered anti-nuclear NIMBYism of Texas and New Mexico is threatening the best thing that ever happened to SNF-disposal policy. Maybe bipartisanship is overrated.