Who decides where nuclear waste is stored?

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court of the United States died out in the debate of several decades on nuclear waste, a hearing debate on the question of whether a private company can build a repository designed to store tons of worn fuel that has stacked over the years in power plants across the country.

The case examines whether the nuclear regulatory committee has the power to grant a license to Interval Storage Partners Inc. to carry out plans to build a storage installation in western Texas. The CNRC also approved a license for a group which intends to build a similar project deeply in the south-east of New Mexico.

Oral arguments were to take place for an hour, but the judges dismissed questions to lawyers on both sides for 95 minutes.

The case could have major implications for the 3.55 million pounds of nuclear fuel exhausted currently stored in dozens of cartridges at the Nuclear Generation Station in San Onofre, because if the sites of western Texas or New Mexico have ever built, it is provided that at least part of the fuel spent in San Onofre is sent.

The Supreme Court is expected to make a decision at the end of June.

About 91,000 metric tonnes of waste has stacked nuclear power plants in 35 states across the country because a permanent repository in the United States has not been built.

For decades, the Yucca Mountain in Nevada was planned as the place to take the fuel spent, but the Obama administration reduced the financing of the site in 2010, after years of protests from the state of money who had long opposed the project.

With Yucca out of the table, federal officials returned to the drawing board, examining the potential sites to accept part or all of the country’s commercial fuel, either on an temporary basis (always to determine years), or permanent.

The proposal of the interim storage partners is considering taking up to 40,000 tonnes of used nuclear fuels and depositing waste underground for about 40 years in the company’s proposed installation in the county of Andrews, Texas.

“With a provisional storage option, the United States could finally start the process of suppressing the nuclear fuel used from local communities and consolidation on a single secure site while a final long-term federal establishment is debated,” said the Society’s website.

But in the words of one of the lawyers before the high court on Wednesday, the governor of Texas Greg Abbott said: “No, essentially on my corpse, will you do this.” Abbott fears that a potential accident in the installation could beat the lucrative petroleum and gas sector in the Permian basin.

In a strange political marriage, environmental and anti-nuclear organizations have joined Abbott to oppose the project.

“I hope that we will not have radiated oil and gas,” joked Judge Neil Gorsuch during the oral arguments.

Judge Samuel Alito has raised a possible enigma with potential temporary storage sites:

“If it is decided that the equipment can be stored out of site temporarily, and temporary means more than 40 years, perhaps more than 80 years, it may mean 250 years, maybe it means 500 years,” said Alito. “Where is the incentive to move forward to do what the congress wanted to do, that is to say to establish a permanent installation?”

The lawyers opposed to the project argued that federal legislation specifically prohibits private temporary storage facilities, but lawyers representing the CNRC and the West Texas project insisted that the Commission had interpreted laws dating from 1954 and 1982 which enabled it to govern the provision of the nuclear country.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh pointed out that Congress did not seem explicitly to prevent the CNRC from issuing licenses to private companies to move forward with out -of -site storage facilities.