Abbott petitions Fifth Circuit to keep spent nuclear fuel out of the Permian Basin

AUSTIN – Governor Greg Abbott yesterday joined Texas’s petition urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to vacate a federal license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that would bring spent nuclear fuel to a private storage facility in the Permian Basin.

The petition argues that the Commission’s licensing decision exceeds its statutory authority, botches basic administrative-law principles, and fails to account for the environmental risks posed by a terrorist attack.

Congress declared decades ago that the federal government must dispose of America’s growing stockpile of spent nuclear fuel in a deep geologic repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

Instead of following the law, however, the federal government now proposes to pile up tons of this deadly radioactive waste on the surface of the world’s largest producing oilfield, at a private storage facility in West Texas.

In licensing this strategic blunder, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has run afoul of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the Atomic Energy Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act.

“I will not let Texas become America’s dumping ground for deadly radioactive waste,” said Governor Abbott. “That is why I signed House Bill 7 at a special session to ban the disposal or storage of high-level radioactive waste in Texas. And it is why I am suing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over its illegal licensing decision in this case. I will continue pursuing every legal avenue to protect the Permian Basin, which is crucial to America’s energy security, and to keep all Texans safe from nuclear waste.”

Read Texas’s petition for review.