The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a private company can restart plans to store spent nuclear waste from across the country at a location near West Texas.

The 6-3 decision held that Texas and another private business did not have authority to challenge the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s license to Interim Storage Partners, which is the company handling the private storage.

The majority said Texas and Forsaken Land Minerals, the other business challenging the license, were not applicants to the license or allowed to intervene in the litigation in lower courts, so they cannot do so here.

“They were not parties to the Commission’s licensing proceeding and therefore cannot obtain judicial review of the Commission’s licensing decision,” Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, wrote in the majority opinion. “In light of the statutory text and context, those who were not license applicants or granted intervention in the Commission’s licensing proceeding do not qualify as parties who can obtain judicial review.”

The decision clears the way for Interim Storage Partners to get to work with storage plans. It received its license about six years ago but has been involved in court proceedings during that time.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, dissented from the majority, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, a Bush appointee and Samuel A. Alito Jr., a Bush appointee. Justice Gorsuch argued Texas and Forsaken Land Minerals should be entitled to their day in court.

“By law, spent nuclear fuel may be stored on an interim basis in only two places: at a nuclear reactor or a federally owned facility. Disregarding those instructions, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued an interim storage license to a private company, Interim Storage Partners, LLC (ISP), allowing it to store thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel on its private property in Texas, hundreds of miles from the nearest reactor,” Justice Gorsuch wrote. “The agency’s decision was unlawful.”

Texas had warned that permitting a temporary license for private aboveground storage of nuclear waste in the western part of the state would be like putting a “terrorist bull’s-eye” on top of an oil field.

Texas argued that Congress had authorized Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the designated site for nuclear waste storage and while that plan has stalled, there has not been another clear site identified. The Yucca Mountain site has been put on hold for decades over political pushback.

Since Texas lost this case, nuclear waste could be transported hundreds of miles across the country to temporary storage sites.

The cases are Interim Storage Partners v. Texas and Nuclear Regulatory Commission v. Texas.

• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.