Sierra Club News:

SANTA FE – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced Thursday it intends to issue a license to HOLTEC International for the construction and operation of an interim nuclear storage facility in New Mexico.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham called on the state Legislature to, “deliver a proposal to my desk that protects New Mexico from becoming the de facto home of the country’s spent nuclear fuel and it will have my full support.”

Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter joins this call and is already working with legislators to secure firm support for voting for legislation to ban the issuance of any state permit until there is a permanent disposal site in conformance with federal law.

“The HOLTEC proposal approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission puts New Mexico communities at risk and lacks common sense,” Sierra Club Leader Patricia Cardona said. “It appears that existing money is being diverted from designing and constructing sturdy permanent repositories for the 98 nuclear reactors as well as sturdy well-designed containers for 33 million fuel rods to build an unsafe temporary site that will be abandoned when there is no money to replace the facility or the containers with the nuclear waste.”