Holtec calls off nuclear waste facility in southeastern New Mexico after local pushback

Holtec International has abandoned plans to build a commercial nuclear waste storage facility in southeastern New Mexico, the company announced Wednesday.

Holtec, in partnership with the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, said in a statement that “due to the untenable path forward for used fuel storage in New Mexico, we mutually agreed upon cancelling the agreement.”

The Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance could not immediately be reached for comment.

Local advocates and leaders who have long opposed the project welcomed the news.

“Holtec was trying to sell something that nobody would buy,” said Don Hancock, longtime advocate and director of the Nuclear Waste Safety Program at the Southwest Research and Information Center.

New Mexicans — particularly those who witnessed or experienced the negative health effects of the nuclear industry — are not naive, Hancock said. Trying to convince cynical citizens that Holtec’s site would be temporary is near impossible, with no permanent solution on the horizon, Hancock said.

The planned site would have housed 500 canisters of spent nuclear fuel — a total of 8,680 metric tons — for 40 years, according to a license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. At the time, Holtec planned to scale up to eventually store 10,000 canisters.

Once built, fuel from nuclear power plants across the country would be transported to the facility by rail.

Not everyone disagreed with the site. Local leaders from Lea and Eddy counties saw the proposed development as a rare opportunity to bring jobs and investments to the rural area.

Hobbs Mayor Sam Cobb is one proponent who said that the facility would be a safe way to diversify the state’s economy especially as energy demands increase due to power-intensive artificial intelligence data centers.

“Personally, I’m disappointed on behalf of my community,” Cobb said.

Cobb said that the ELEA will look for new projects for the vacant land.

“I’m a patient man,” Cobb said. “I hope that a new opportunity will arise.”

One of the project’s highest-profile opponents was Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who criticized the proposal and signed legislation to stop it.

In 2023, Lujan Grisham signed House Bill 53 into law, banning state agencies from granting additional permits for the storage of nuclear waste.

“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, Lujan Grisham said in a statement Thursday.

Even with the state law, a legal battle ensued in the U.S. Supreme Court over whether nuclear storage facilities could be licensed in New Mexico and Texas’ oil drilling country — a substantial source of revenue for both states. In June, the Supreme Court sided with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and threw out the two states’ legal claim.

Even with the Supreme Court’s backing, a resistant state government proved to be an insurmountable obstacle for Holtec.

The company said in its statement Wednesday that it would “work with other states who are amenable to used fuel storage based on recent (Department of Energy) work on public education and outreach.”

New Mexico Environment Secretary James Kenney pointed to New Mexico’s history with nuclear waste and ongoing health effects as reason enough to reject the project.

“Until Congress finds a solution for spent commercial nuclear wastes, New Mexico will stand in firm opposition of further promises of corporate wealth that occur at the expense of our generational health,” Kenney said in a statement Thursday.

Camilla Feibelman, director of the Rio Grande chapter of the Sierra Club, agreed that New Mexico, the state that developed the atom bomb, has suffered enough.

Though New Mexico’s energy grid does receive nuclear power from neighboring Arizona’s Palo Verde Generating Station, Feibelman called the prospect of shipping waste from facilities across the country unfair.

“If no community wants the waste, even the communities that have generated it, then we need to take a serious look at whether we should be expanding our nuclear reliance,” Feibelman said.