Comment:
Thank you, New Mexican and Sarah Graham for covering this very important issue. Apart from cash flow and profit for Holtec, this proposal — or any other proposal for consolidated interim storage — addresses no actual need. It is based on a terrible logic, that of conquest.
As many commenters pointed out last night, if this proposal is safe, why is it not being proposed for location(s) near (or at) nuclear reactors, where the spent fuel is today and where the people and institutions have benefited from creating, and continuing to create, this waste? It is, really and truly, deadly, and transportation is indeed very dangerous.
This is being proposed for New Mexico only because a) a handful of private interests in the local area will benefit in the short run, and b) New Mexico may lack sufficient clarity and clout to successfully oppose this. Colonies always have “compradora” that help the colonizers. They are essential. John Heaton is a smart guy, but sadly ideological, and that is the role he and his buddies are playing here.
The planned further privatization of the nuclear waste industry, with the NRC using its federal powers to help private companies make money at public expense as in this case, is at the root of this awful proposal. In this matter, the NRC has exactly one (1) proposal before it. A realistic appraisal of alternatives is impossible under this model.
Should this proposal be realized, it would truly be an economic death-knell for the state. The reputational harm would be intense. The equation “New Mexico = nuclear weapons and waste” would become part of the nation’s, and world’s, views of the state. Add in desertification, and goodbye amenity-based development.
Once brought, this waste would never leave. This is a permanent, not interim facility, but one that lacks ALL of the qualities needed for a permanent facility. The lies behind it are so breathtaking, so “big” (as Hitler suggested would work), that it is difficult for ordinary people to even imagine them. This has a lulling effect, which must be resisted.
There are many good alternatives to this benighted proposal. The spent nuclear fuel problem is not impossible to solve. There is a challenge to antinuclear activists in this as well: to help solve this problem, not just block everything.
We can start by keeping this waste in the states where it was generated, and managing it much better there for starters, to avoid the intense moral hazard that underlies the decisions being made in dozens of states to make more of it.
There is absolutely no reason why spent nuclear fuel cannot be safely disposed in those states, or very near them via regional compacts. We have to change our thinking, and our institutions. The idea of sending nuclear waste to “the desert” somewhere is a huge part of the problem.