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Holtec Industries has pulled out of an eight-year-old land use agreement with local stakeholders in Southeast New Mexico for the construction and operation of an underground temporary nuclear waste storage facility.
Patrick O’Brien, a spokesperson for Holtec, confirmed in an email to New Mexico Political Report on Thursday that the decision for Holtec and the Eddy Lea Energy Alliance (ELEA) to terminate their land use for the Hi-Store project was mutual.
“After discussions with our longtime partner in the HI-STORE project, the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, and due to the untenable path forward for used fuel storage in New Mexico, we mutually agreed upon cancelling the agreement,” O’Brien said in the email. He added that canceling the agreement will allow the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, a limited liability corporation owned by Eddy and Lea counties and the cities of Carlsbad and Hobbs, to redevelop the 1,000 acres of property between the two cities in a way that meets their needs.
O’Brien added that leaving the agreement allows Holtec to work with other states “amenable to used fuel storage based on the recent DOE (Department of Energy) work on public education and outreach.”
Holtec and ELEA had entered into a land use agreement in 2016, a year after agreeing to a memorandum of understanding to construct, maintain, and operate a Consolidated Interim Storage Facility, known as the HI-STORE CISF, for the storage of nuclear materials on one thousand acres owned by ELEA and located between Carlsbad and Hobbs.
“The HI-STORE CISF will be located on a small and isolated portion of a thousand acres of undeveloped ELEA land that is geologically stable, with a dry and arid climate that is ideal for the underground dry fuel storage system. The project will create jobs for local workers, boosting local incomes that will lead to an improvement in the local infrastructure,” according to the project’s website.
According to Holtec, the facility would have had the initial capacity to store 8,680 metric tons or 500 canisters of spent nuclear fuel for up to 40 years. However, under plans for expansion, it was planned that the facility eventually would have been able to store 173,600 metric tons or 100,000 canisters. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2023 granted Holtec’s request for a license to build the facility.
However, the project was not without its critics. Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham and others have voiced concerns about the hazards of storing such material, calling any decision to allow construction of such a facility in the state’s oil patch “economic malpractice.”
In 2023, the Legislature passed and Lujan Grisham signed Senate Bill 53 into law, which prevents state agencies and local officials from issuing permits or leases for nuclear waste storage facilities.
On Thursday, Lujan Grisham applauded the decision to terminate the agreement.
“I’m glad that Holtec heard our strenuous objections and decided that fighting to put more nuclear waste in New Mexico was a losing proposition. In 2023, New Mexico passed a law banning state agencies from granting permits or contracts for high-level nuclear waste storage. We stand firm in our resolve to protect our state from becoming a nuclear dumping ground,” Lujan Grisham said in a statement provided by the governor’s office.
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