A win for interim storage of nuclear waste in the U.S.?

Supreme Court Clears Path for Private Nuclear Waste Storage, Offering Relief for Stranded Sites Like San Onofre

6-3 Ruling Allows Texas and New Mexico Facilities to Proceed as U.S. Grapples With Mounting Radioactive Waste Crisis

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court delivered a critical victory for the nuclear industry Wednesday, clearing the way for privately operated temporary storage facilities for radioactive waste from decommissioned power plants, including California's San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

The justices, by a 6-3 vote, reversed a federal appeals court ruling that invalidated the license granted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to a private company for the facility in southwest Texas. The decision removes a major legal obstacle to addressing America's growing nuclear waste crisis, which has left roughly 100,000 tons (90,000 metric tons) of spent fuel, some of it dating from the 1980s, piling up at current and former nuclear plant sites nationwide and growing by more than 2,000 tons (1,800 metric tons) a year.

The ruling holds particular significance for California's San Onofre facility, where 3.55 million pounds of highly radioactive waste stored at nuclear power facilities in 35 states sits just 100 feet from the Pacific Ocean, on an active fault line, near Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton. The plant was permanently shuttered in 2013 after equipment failures, leaving Southern California Edison to manage the radioactive legacy indefinitely.

A Procedural Victory With Broader Implications

Justice Brett Kavanaugh's majority opinion focused on procedural grounds, ruling that Texas and a major landowner in southwest Texas forfeited their right to challenge the NRC licensing decision in federal court. However, the court hinted at deeper support for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's authority, with Kavanaugh writing that "history and precedent offer significant support for the commission's longstanding interpretation" that it can license temporary storage sites.

The decision wasn't unanimous. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in dissent that the NRC's "decision was unlawful" because spent nuclear fuel can be temporarily stored in only two places under federal law, at a nuclear reactor or at a federally owned facility. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas signed on to the dissenting opinion.

The ruling preserves licenses for facilities in Andrews County, Texas, operated by Interim Storage Partners—a joint venture between France-based Orano and Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists—and a similar facility in New Mexico operated by Holtec International. The licenses would allow the companies to operate the facilities for 40 years, with the possibility of a 40-year renewal.

San Onofre's Urgent Storage Challenge

For San Onofre, the court's decision offers a potential pathway out of an increasingly precarious situation. Since the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository plan was terminated in 2008, nuclear waste will have to be stored on site in San Onofre until Congress finds another location for a nuclear waste repository.

The waste is currently stored in steel-lined concrete pools known as wet storage and later transferred to steel canisters surrounded by concrete. Southern California Edison completed transferring all of the nuclear fuel to dry storage in 2020.

Safety concerns have mounted over the coastal location. SONGS has always been exposed to the risks of earthquakes (the Newport-Inglewood-Rose Canyon fault zone lies just offshore), bluff erosion, storm surge and wave events. Environmental groups have raised alarms about San Onofre storage canisters may start leaking radiation into the environment as early as 2020, possibly sooner. The NRC reported a similar container at the Koeberg nuclear plant in South Africa failed after 17 years from chloride induced stress corrosion cracking (CISCC), triggered by corrosive salt in the marine environment.

Political and Economic Implications

The ruling comes as the federal government faces mounting pressure to address its nuclear waste obligations. The US government was required to begin storing spend nuclear fuel in 1998 but has still not developed a plan or found a location to do so, resulting in a successful lawsuit filed by Southern California Edison, which has received over $9 billion in federal funds to continue to maintain the spent nuclear fuel on site while the federal government looks for a long-term site.

Representative Mike Levin (D-Oceanside), whose district includes San Onofre, has made removing the waste a top priority. Democratic Rep. Mike Levin has worked with the DOE and Congress to establish a priority system to guide the movement of stored waste. Under his proposed framework, older sites with environmental or national security issues would be among the first to have their waste moved once an interim site is found.

Industry Response and Future Outlook

The nuclear industry welcomed the decision as essential for operational flexibility. The NRC has said that the temporary storage sites are needed because existing nuclear plants are running out of room. The presence of the spent fuel also complicates plans to decommission some plants.

However, significant hurdles remain. Both Texas Governor Greg Abbott and New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham continue to oppose the facilities in their states. Lujan Grisham said she was deeply disappointed by the court's ruling, reiterating that Holtec International, awarded the license for the New Mexico facility, wasn't welcome in the state.

For San Onofre, the path forward remains uncertain despite the legal victory. SCE will take "commercially reasonable" efforts to relocate to either a CISF, such as Holtec or Eddy Lea Energy's proposed CIS in New Mexico and Waste Control Specialists' proposed CISF in Texas, or an expanded ISFSI at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, though Palo Verde has repeatedly rejected that option.

The Supreme Court's decision represents a significant step toward addressing America's nuclear waste impasse, but plans for a permanent underground storage facility at Yucca Mountain, northwest of Las Vegas, are stalled because of staunch opposition from most Nevada residents and officials. Until a permanent solution emerges, sites like San Onofre will continue to serve as reluctant custodians of the nation's radioactive legacy.

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SIDEBAR: New Approaches to Nuclear Waste Reprocessing Could Transform Industry

While the Supreme Court decision addresses storage challenges, nuclear scientists and startups are pursuing revolutionary reprocessing technologies that could dramatically reduce waste volumes and extract additional energy from spent fuel.

The Reprocessing Renaissance

Jake DeWitte, CEO of Oklo, claims "there's enough energy content in the waste of today's reactors to power the whole country for 150 years." His company is among several pursuing nuclear fuel recycling, a concept that has gained renewed attention as the U.S. nuclear industry seeks solutions to mounting waste problems.

Traditional reprocessing using the PUREX (Plutonium Uranium Redox EXtraction) method has been practiced in France, the UK, and Japan for decades. France has been using nuclear waste recycling technology for decades to manage the 1,150 tonnes of spent fuel it produces annually, extracting uranium and plutonium for reuse and converting them into mixed oxide (MOX) fuel. However, PUREX produces separated plutonium, raising proliferation concerns that led President Jimmy Carter to ban commercial reprocessing in the U.S. in 1977.

Promising New Technologies

Pyroprocessing: Developed at Argonne National Laboratory in the 1980s and 1990s, pyroprocessing uses high-temperature molten salt to separate nuclear materials without producing pure plutonium. Instead of isolating pure plutonium, this process keeps it mixed with other heavy elements, making it "messy, dirty stuff" that would require "a whole separate reprocessing facility" to weaponize.

CURIE Program: The Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) CURIE program explores multiple reprocessing technologies, including aqueous, pyroprocessing, and fluoride volatility methods, setting cost targets of 0.1¢/kWh for disposal and 1¢/kWh for fuel costs.

Waste to Stable Salt (WATSS): Canadian company Moltex Clean Energy has developed technology that could provide Canada with 8,000 MW of power for 60 years using existing nuclear waste stockpiles while reducing the need for long-term storage.

The Debate Continues

Reprocessing advocates argue the technology could address multiple challenges simultaneously. New reprocessing technologies are being developed to be deployed in conjunction with fast neutron reactors which will burn all long-lived actinides, including all uranium and plutonium, without separating them from one another.

However, critics raise serious concerns. The Union of Concerned Scientists argues that reprocessing increases, not decreases, total waste volume, with reprocessing increasing low-level waste volume by a factor of six to seven relative to direct disposal. Security experts warn that reprocessing would make it easier for terrorists to acquire nuclear weapons materials, noting that less than 20 pounds of plutonium is needed to make a simple nuclear weapon.

The proliferation debate extends beyond U.S. borders. In 2023, nuclear energy experts called for a formal risk assessment of reprocessing technologies, warning that if successful, the process could be adopted by other countries to produce nuclear weapons.

Economic Reality Check

Cost remains a significant hurdle. As former Nuclear Regulatory Commission chair Allison Macfarlane noted, "We always find out that it's way too expensive," pointing to France's experience where Germany and Japan both ended reprocessing contracts due to expense. Current cost estimates for a large-scale PUREX-based reprocessing facility hover at $20 billion.

Despite these challenges, the Biden and Trump administrations have both shown interest in reprocessing research, with reprocessing playing prominently in executive orders that President Trump signed on nuclear energy, though some experts warn this could detract from proven waste management solutions.

For San Onofre and similar sites, reprocessing remains a long-term possibility rather than an immediate solution, as even the most optimistic projections suggest commercial-scale facilities are years away from reality.

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Sources

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A win for interim storage of nuclear waste in the U.S.?