Holtec Gets Approval for New Mexico Nuclear Waste Storage Site

(Bloomberg) -- Holtec International has received federal approval to build and operate an underground nuclear waste storage facility in southeastern New Mexico.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted a license to Holtec for a facility that can house 500 cannisters holding approximately 8,680 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel from commercial power plants for 40 years in Lea County. The company has outlined plans to store an additional 10,000 canisters at the site, the commission said in a statement Tuesday. 

The approval comes amid a political logjam over where to store tens of thousands of metric tons of nuclear waste produced by the nation’s fleet of more than 90 nuclear reactors. Congress in 1987 designated a ridge in the Nevada desert about 90 miles north of Las Vegas called Yucca Mountain to be the nation’s repository. But decades of political opposition led by Nevada Democrat and former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid kept the project from moving forward.

The NRC approved a site in Andrews, Texas for interim nuclear waste storage in 2021, but construction has yet to begin amid state opposition.

New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has opposed the Holtec project, vowing “the state of New Mexico will not become a dumping ground for the nation’s spent nuclear fuel.”

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