This year, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a 40-year license for a private company, Holtec International, to build a facility between Hobbs and Carlsbad that would store nuclear waste from decommissioned power plants across the country. It’s a very controversial project. So New Mexico PBS Producer Laura Paskus produced a one-hour Our Land special for New Mexico in Focus airing August 25 that explores what's at stake with this project. She spoke with KUNM ahead of the show, which you can see here and find more information online.
LAURA PASKUS: So I think most New Mexicans probably have opinions on the Holtec plan to come to New Mexico, but it's really hard to excavate facts about it. And so I really wanted to go through the record, go through the environmental studies, talk to people, and build some context, some historical context about why there is a problem with nuclear waste, what New Mexico's role could potentially be, what the federal government's role is, and really give our audience a big picture view of this project.
KUNM: And give us a little bit of background on the project. What are we talking about here? What is this going to look like, potentially?
PASKUS: They would bring the radioactive waste from power plants, on rail cars to New Mexico. And you know, they have a whole system outlined, for storing these canisters. It's what's called dry cask storage. It would be in some ways sort of similar to WIPP [the Waste Isolation Pilot Plan], but also different from WIPP.
KUNM: Is it fair to say that's more dangerous waste?
PASKUS: Commercial nuclear waste that would be coming to the state for the Holtec facility is cesium, strontium, plutonium. And those different elements have different half-lives and different levels of danger, I would say. But on the whole, commercial nuclear waste is more dangerous and radioactive than transuranic waste.
KUNM: There has been a lot of resistance to this project by state officials. Can you talk about that?
PASKUS: There are very few proponents for this project. The entire federal delegation is against it. The governor is against it, the legislature passed a bill preventing Holtec from building this facility, or preventing the state from issuing permits. There's a groundswell of opposition among New Mexicans against it. But there is a core group of people and Eddie and Lea counties, and with the cities of Hobbs and Carlsbad who are for it. As part of this special I talked with John Heaton who, I would say, is probably the person most responsible in the state for bringing Holtec here. And you know, the way that he explains it, from his perspective is, why should anybody outside of Hobbs and Carlsbad have a say in what happens? But clearly, this is an issue that concerns all New Mexicans.
KUNM: Who else are you talking to?
PASKUS: This all started actually out of a very, very long conversation with John Heaton. He repeatedly talked about Senator Jeff Steinborn, who was the legislator who introduced Senate Bill 53. And so I really felt like I needed to interview Senator Steinborn and let him respond. So with those two interviews in mind, I was looking for somebody who could offer a big picture view. And that is Dr. Myrriah Gómez. She's a professor at the University of New Mexico. She recently, in the past few years, wrote a book called “Nuclear Nuevo Mexico”, which looks at colonialism and the effects of the nuclear industrial complex in New Mexico. So it's those three people.
KUNM: Why did you want to add Dr. Gomez?
PASKUS: Yeah, she's remarkable. Her research is so interesting to me. She is a native New Mexican who grew up in northern New Mexico, has family who has been impacted by the nuclear industrial complex in the state. And she is a thorough and amazing researcher. And she is also an academic who writes stringent academic work that is also readable by a general audience. You know, she focuses a lot in her work about Los Alamos and Trinity, but also is looking at Holtec and what it means for New Mexico's future when we continue to be perceived by the rest of the nation as a place that's very wide open to the nuclear military industrial complex.
KUNM: So what happens next with Holtec?
PASKUS: I think things are kind of at a standstill right now, but I anticipate something will happen in the next few months.
