No High-Level Waste To New Mexico!
"The most toxic and dangerous type of radioactive waste created by the nuclear industry"
This is waste generated by nuclear power plants called "high level radioactive waste" (HLW), also known as "spent" or "irradiated" fuel. This waste contains plutonium, uranium, strontium, and cesium, and will be radioactive for millions of years.
It is not like the waste currently stored at the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) or any other waste site that exists today in the U.S.- it is far worse!
Two companies are proposing to build waste facilities near Carlsbad and Hobbs for the most toxic and dangerous type of radioactive waste created by the nuclear industry.
Holtec International is working with the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, LLC (ELEA) to apply for a license to build a Consolidated Interim Storage (CIS) facility approximately halfway between Carlsbad and Hobbs, and 16 miles north of WIPP.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has declared the Holtec/ELEA application complete, NRC initiated a public comment period with 60 days for public comment.
Note that transport of this waste poses risks to the environment and all life located near transportation routes.
Holtec proposal:
- New CIS facility to store 100,000 metric tons of HLRW, with potential to increase to 120,000 metric tons for 120 years
- Shallow sub-surface burial system
New Mexicans and Texans are fighting the attempted licensing of these two proposed CIS facilitiesWaste Control Specialists near Andrews, Texas and Eddy Lee/Holtec International east of Carlsbad, New Mexico. These sites, and any transport to these sites, are not only dangerous, but environmentally unjust. These sites present clear examples of environmental racism.
New Mexico's demographic is largely Latino. There are many communities of color, especially in the southern part of the state where the sites are being proposed. People of color would be disproportionately affected if the Eddy Lee/Holtec CIS site were licensed and constructed.
New Mexico and Texas do not consent to either proposed CIS facility and are fighting to avoid the environmental injustice and the unnecessary shipment of irradiated high-level nuclear waste through their communities. - NRC Environmental Report
- Here's the Federal Register Notice

Comments due July 30! - NWNM sample comments - Submit comments online

June 4, 2018. To mark today's theme of ecological devastation being promoted nation-wide by the Poor People's Campaign, activists in New Mexico hung two banners over I-25 visible to commuters heading north-bound from Albuquerque to Santa Fe. The banners conveyed two messages: Stop Holtec and No Holtec No Nuclear Waste, both with the hashtag #nmppc.

- New Mexico interim storage for Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site divides New Mexico gubernatorial candidates - Public News Service: Groups Fight Nuclear Waste Storage Proposal in NM - Albuquerque Journal: Spent Nuclear Fuel Plan Draws Questions - Albuquerque Journal: Nuclear Fuel Storage Plan Sparks Fears

Fact sheet:
Principles for Safe Management and Geological Isolation of Irradiated Nuclear Fuel
The environmental risks posed by irradiated fuel are extreme: As observed by the U.S. Court of Appeals, it has "the capacity to outlast human civilization as we know it and the potential to devastate public health and the environment." Nuclear Energy Inst., Inc. v. Envtl. Prot. Agency, 373 F.3d 1251 (D.C. Cir. 2004).If irradiated fuel is dispersed into the environment, its radionuclides are sufficiently toxic to cause irreparable contamination of large areas of land and entire river and lake systems and coastal ecosystems.
The risk of nuclear weapons proliferation posed by irradiated fuel is also significant. Each metric ton of spent fuel typically contains more than one Nagasaki-bomb equivalent of plutonium and, as of 2016, well over 70,000 metric tons had already be been created in the United States by the commercial nuclear power reactors. Spent fuel, storage and/or disposal may pose a risk of theft if it is stored or disposed of in a manner that would allow access in a few hundred years, when the fission product radiation barrier would have declined to low levels. .
This document proposes a set of principles for the safe management of commercial irradiated nuclear reactor fuel (i.e., commercial spent fuel) and high-level radioactive waste. The principles are designed to address the significant public health, environmental, and security risks posed by irradiated fuel. They recognize that irradiated fuel poses hazards for periods of time far longer than human history and must be managed in a way that minimizes its environmental, health, and security risks to the extent possible. And they recognize that nuclear power and nuclear weapons are intimately connected, not least in the issue of nuclear spent fuel and its management.
- (view/download PDF)
More:
- Consolidated Interim Storage handout (PDF)