Texas is taking a fight over the country’s nuclear waste to the Supreme Court.
The issue, a Not In My Backyard dilemma involving toxic radioactive nuclear waste, has been swirling for decades. The latest flashpoint, which hits the Supreme Court on Wednesday, involves a proposed storage site in West Texas.
A law passed in 1982 was supposed to have created a permanent dumping ground for nuclear power plant waste − considered dangerous for thousands of years after its produced. Four decades later, no permanent solution exists. The court will hear a challenge to the government’s ability to license private companies to temporarily store that spent nuclear fuel. Texas and private companies want to be able to sue over that.
Texas and local landowners that don’t want the storage sites in their backyard sued to block the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from approving a facility in Andrews County, Texas, near the state’s border with New Mexico.
They argue the commission lacks authority to permit the storage facility, which sits far away from any of America’s nuclear reactors.
The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Texas and the federal government wants the Supreme Court to reverse that decision.
The Justice Department argues the lower court’s ruling “upends the Commission’s 44-year-old regulatory framework for licensing storage of spent fuel” and carries “serious repercussions” for the nuclear power industry.
The Supreme Court could avoid deciding whether the regulatory commission acted lawfully by ruling that Texas and the private companies don’t have the legal ability to challenge the commission’s decision.
Doing so would allow the storage site to proceed.
Or the court could delve into the difficult debate over how to handle nuclear waste in the United States.