Ambient office = 109 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 81 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 87 nanosieverts per hour

Ginger root from Central Market = 91 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 75 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 67 nanosieverts per hour

Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     Almost twenty years ago, Utah passed statutes to block an interim nuclear waste storage facility. They based their actions on safety concerns. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit struck down Utah’s laws because they were preempted. In a more recent case, Virginia’s battle to ban uranium mining went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court upheld Virginia’s ban in 2019.
     Legislative approaches have not always paid off. In September of 2021, Texas passed House Bill 7 to block a nuclear waste storage facility similar to the Holtec project. The proposed facility was to be located about a mile from the N.M. border. A few days later, the NRC approved a license for it, but the battle continues.
     The NRC has not yet issued a decision about whether it will approve a license for the Holtec project in N.M. The NRC recently notified Holtec that its decision would be delayed until the end of May.
     Safety issues remain a major concern. Among many possible dangers, critics mention that trains transporting radioactive waste could derail or crash. The recent train derailment disaster in Ohio renders this concern more relevant than ever.
      An accident involving the Holtec project would not only threaten residents and the environment. It could also destroy the N.M. economy, according to a legislative fiscal impact report. The report said, “A significant accident or attack on a radioactive waste storage facility could significantly disrupt oil and gas activity in one of the most productive oil and gas producing regions in the world.”
     In court documents, N.M. has argued that the NRC did not consider the expense of upgrading the state’s rail system to accommodate the transportation of large volumes of spent nuclear fuel to the Permian Basin where the Holtec project would be constructed.
     The Permian Basin is also prone to earthquakes. Quakes have been linked to injection wells associated with fracking. James Kenney is the Environmental Department Secretary for N.M. He has expressed concerns that earthquakes could damage Holtec’s storage canisters. This would jeopardize the public and the groundwater.
     Another major concern is that Holtec could go out of business. This would leave the canisters to languish and deteriorate. Such a prospect was mentioned by many opponents during the legislative committee meetings. N.M. has a history of failed radioactive cleanups, including hundreds of uranium mines on the Navajo Nation that have yet to be remediated.
     Patric O’Brien is a Holtec Spokesman. He said that his company is very disappointed in N.M.’s new law. He said, in an emailed statement, that the proposed storage facility is “safe, secure and does not impact the environment negatively.” The Holtec facility would create many jobs and is desperately needed, according to proponents. The U.S. lack of a permanent geological repository for spent nuclear fuel has forced nuclear power plants to store their spent fuel on site. This results in a huge cost to taxpayers. The expense borne by the federal government has already reached nine billion dollars.
     The Holtec facility has local backing, according to O’Brien. Supporters of the Holtec project include business leaders and public officials in Eddy and Lea counties. The Eddy-Lee Energy Alliance has been promoting the project for years. O’Brien wrote that the facility “is a tremendous economic opportunity for Southeastern New Mexico.” He said that Holtec will continue working “to help provide an interim solution to the spent fuel management impasse in the United States.”

Ambient office = 127 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 86 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 89 nanosieverts per hour

English cucumber from Central Market = 80 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 86 nanosieverts per hour

Part 1 of 2 Parts
     Last March, New Mexico (N.M.) lawmakers took their biggest step yet in an attempt to block plans for a nuclear waste storage facility near Carlsbad. The N.M. legislature passed Senate Bill 53. The bill seeks to block Holtec International efforts to build a facility in southeastern N.M. that would hold eight thousand six hundred metric tons of spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power plants across the U.S. N.M. has been challenging Holtec’s plans for years, both in court and before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. However, N.M.’s best chance at stopping the project may come in the form of a new law, which went into effect when N.M. Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed it on March 17th.
     Legal and nuclear experts anticipate that the new law will face legal challenges. Federal courts will likely determine if N.M. has the authority to prevent Holtec from constructing its Consolidated Interim Storage Facility on a one-thousand-acre site between Carlsbad and Hobbs.
     Opponents of the project include the governor and state legislators, the N.M. congressional delegation, the All Pueblo Council of Governors, many local governments and an array of activists and citizens. Opponents say that transporting spent nuclear fuel through N.M. and storing it near one of the world’s most productive oil fields would jeopardize the economy, the environment, and health and safety.
     Rose Gardner is a Eunice resident and member of the Alliance for Environmental Strategies. She said, “People are deserving of protection for our way of life and our health and well-being.”
     The Governor sent a letter to the NRC after she signed the bill. She asked the agency “to immediately suspend any further consideration of the Holtec license application.” The Governor noted that the new law establishes two conditions that must be met before the state can issue permits, contract or licenses for a spent nuclear fuel storage facility. First, N.M. must consent to the facility. Second, the federal government must have a permanent spent nuclear fuel repository, so that an alternative storage site exists. Neither of those conditions have been met.
     If no permanent nuclear waste repository exists, the Holtec site would not be “interim storage”. Instead, it would be forever storage. N.M. would become the dumping ground for all the spent nuclear fuel, say opponents.
     If there is a court challenge, N.M. will need to prove that the new law is not focused on safety concerns. Nuclear safety falls under the purview of the federal government. This was established by the Atomic Energy Act (AEA). Under the AEA, the federal government retains the right to regulate safety issues for nuclear power plants and waste. The federal law preempts state statutes, which can be challenged in court if they conflict with federal authority. The fiscal impact report for the new law says, “Costly and time-consuming litigation could occur if this bill were challenged.”
     Representative Matthew McQueen (D-Galisteo) is the co-sponsor of the bill. He directly addressed the preemption issue during committee hearing. He assured fellow lawmakers that the bill avoided any problems. He said, “Federal law preempts the state’s ability to regulate the safety or handling of nuclear waste. So we’re not doing that.”
     Six lawyers and experts said that it was unclear whether NM’s law would be considered a preemption. Nuclear waste storage laws like N.M.’s are almost always challenged in court according to Geoffrey Fettus who is an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. He said, “New Mexico took deep pains to sail the ship into the dock without hitting the sides of federal preemption.”
Please read Part 2 next

Ambient office = 135 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 109 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 111 nanosieverts per hour

Blueberry from Central Market = 79 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 89 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 69 nanosieverts per hour

Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     The race is on for developers of small modular reactors (SMR) to find designs that the DoE could choose to build for up to ten units by 2025. Each reactor will have to generate between fifty and three hundred megawatts. The smaller, simpler project scale and standardization process management could result in the creation of a “playbook” for project construction. The DoE says “First-of-a-kind reactors may be expensive, but repeat deployments are expected to drive substantial cost reductions.”
     GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, the Tennessee Valley Authority, Ontario Power Generation and Poland-based clean energy technology firm Synthos Green Energy have all signed a technical collaboration agreement to support global development of GE Hitachi’s BWRX-300 SMR.
     GE Hitachi has also awarded an engineering contract to BWX Technologies for the SMR reactor vessel. The vessel contains the reactor’s core and associated internals. It is the biggest component in the reactor. The project includes engineering analysis, design support, manufacturing, and procurement preparations. John MacQuarrie is president of BWXT Commercial Operations. He recently said that the company would be “one of the first to execute an SMR design contract for a North American deployment.”
     Site preparation is being undertaken for a BWRX-300 reactor to be constructed at Ontario Power’s Darlington nuclear power site in Clarington, Ontario. The TVA is also preparing a construction permit application for the reactor at the Clinch River site near Oak Ridge, Tennessee. It is investigating other possible SMR sites in its service area. Synthos Green Energy has submitted an application to Polish nuclear regulator to assess the design for the BWRX-300 reactor.
      Dow and X-energy have also agreed to demonstrate a four-unit Xe-100 advanced nuclear power plant that they claim would be the first at grid-scale for an industrial site. It will be located at a Dow plant on the Gulf of Mexico, the company said in March. Dow would become a sub-awardee under X-energy’s DoE-awarded Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program grant. This would represent a fifty/fifty cost share award of one-billion-dollars-plus to demonstrate the reactor.
     This project is expected to provide low-carbon power and steam to the Dow plant by 2030. A construction permit application will be submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) with site selection expected before the end of 2023. The companies have also agreed to license and share technology as well as lessons learned from its development.
     The NRC also said in March that it had started its technical review of NuScale Power’s second standards SMR design. This new version has changes that improve it economics and expedite commercialization, according to John Hopkins, the CEO of NuScale. The company’s VOYGR SMR is a pressurized water reactor that can generate 77 megawatts of power and be scaled to satisfy customer needs.
     Even smaller micro-reactors are also gaining momentum. A new initiative known as Nuclear in District Energy Applications is being developed by the Electric Power Research Institute and a group of universities, energy developers and engineers that include Burns & McDonnell and Sargent and Lundy. This could result in nuclear energy being available as an option for the district energy market by 2026. There is also serious market potential for using small or micro nuclear reactors to charge heavy duty electric vehicles according to the Idaho National Laboratory.
     Westinghouse Electric Company recently said that it would file for joint design approval for its five-megawatt eVinci micro reactor for deployment in the U.S. and Canada. The eVinci is a transportable unit that can deliver combined heat and power. It is fully factory built, fueled, and assembled. The eVinci is designed to operate for eight years or more without refueling, the company added.

Ambient office = 117 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 123 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 126 nanosieverts per hour

Avocado from Central Market = 113 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 60 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 52 nanosieverts per hour