Texas urges Supreme Court to block nuclear waste site

By Niina H. Farah | 01/17/2025 06:53 AM EST

The justices are preparing to hear arguments in March over the federal government’s licensing of a temporary storage facility in the Permian Basin.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission outside Washington.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission outside Washington. Texas’ brief comes in response to the NRC’s petition seeking to reverse a 2023 ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that tossed out its license for the Interim Storage Partners facility in Andrews County, Texas. Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Texas’ top attorney is calling on the Supreme Court to stop a spent nuclear fuel storage project from moving forward in the Lone Star State’s oil-rich Permian Basin.

In a brief docketed Wednesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, said a planned, privately run storage facility approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to house thousands of metric tons of spent fuel hundreds of miles away from any nuclear plants would threaten the state’s air, water and land.

“No statute mentions, let alone authorizes, private interim offsite storage. Instead, the only interim storage Congress has permitted is in federal facilities, and only under defined circumstances,” said Paxton.

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“Because the Commission has created its own plan ‘without any legal basis,'” he added, “its actions cannot stand.”

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