The United States Supreme Court will hear a case regarding a previously blocked attempt to store nuclear waste at facilities in West Texas.
On Friday, justices agreed to review an appellate court ruling that found the Nuclear Regulatory Commission exceeded its authority in permitting a private company—Interim Storage Partners—to store the waste at a dump in West Texas for 40 years.
The facility was initially slated to take up to 5,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel rods from power plants and 231 million tons of other radioactive waste, according to court documents.
While initially blocked by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in August 2023, the NRC had requested the court revisit its decision. The three-judge panel subsequently rejected the plea on March 14, 2024.
Justices Edith H. Jones, James C. Ho, and Cory T. Wilson wrote in their rejection that they had identified two criteria for reviewing the NRC’s actions: whether the plaintiffs were aggrieved by the project and whether the NRC acted beyond its legal authority.
Those criteria were first outlined in a near decades-long battle between federal regulators and Nevada over another nuclear waste project on Yucca Mountain.
“We continue to adhere to our position that the judiciary has not only the authority but the duty to review the NRC’s actions, which may threaten significant environmental damage in the Permian Basin, one of the largest fossil fuel deposits in the world,” read the decision.
The outcome of the case is also slated to affect a similar situation surrounding nuclear waste storage in rural New Mexico, The Associated Press reported.
In a rare display of unity, both Republicans like Gov. Greg Abbott and individuals involved in liberal environmental groups like the Sierra Club have condemned the Biden-Harris administration’s nuclear waste project.
“I will not let Texas become America’s dumping ground for deadly radioactive waste,” posted Abbott on X in 2022. A year prior, he signed legislation aimed at preventing the storage or transportation of high-level nuclear waste in the state.
“Those who generated the power and benefitted from it, should take responsibility for the waste and not truck it down the highway, across the country, to dump on West Texas,” wrote Susan Curry, a Sierra Club organizer in West Texas. “Those sites already are licensed to store the waste for 60 years past decommissioning, and the sites are already guarded.”
A decision from the justices is expected by the middle of 2025.
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