Archive for the ‘WCS’ Category
Los Alamos Waste Arrives in West Texas
April 1, 2014
by Jim Malewitz
Texas Tribune
![WCS lower level](http://nukefreetexas.org/images/WCS_lower_level.jpg)
Photo by: David Bowser
An overhead view in 2012 of Waste Control Specialists’ low-level radioactive waste storage facilities near Andrews, Texas. The site is poised to get 420 truckloads of waste from New Mexico.
A storage facility in Andrews County, Texas has recieved its first truckload of transuranic waste from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the U.S. Department of Energy and the New Mexico-based Nuclear Waste Partnership said Wednesday in a news release.
The truck arrived safely, and as many as 10 shipments per week are scheduled over the coming months, the release said.
The private facility, operated by Waste Control Specialists, will be paid up to $8.8 million to store the waste for as long as a year.
Original story:
In a matter of days, a West Texas radioactive waste site is expected to start receiving up to 420 truckloads of radioactive junk — some dating back to the 1940s — from the federal government’s nuclear weapons program.
The waste was not originally meant to leave New Mexico, but a sequence of events headlined by a Feb. 14 radiation leak at a disposal facility near Carlsbad has left its handlers eyeing a private collection site in Andrews County, Texas.
The company, along with Texas and U.S. officials, say the waste will be stored safely — and temporarily. But the plan has stirred concerns among environmentalists who object to the state’s expanding radioactive footprint.
The transuranic waste — clothing, tools, debris and other items contaminated by radioactive elements, mostly plutonium — is currently stored at Los Alamos National Laboratory, which has been under pressure to remove the waste from its grounds since a series of wildfires raged dangerously close to its grounds in the summer of 2011.
Under a deal with the state of New Mexico, the laboratories promised to send the waste away by June 30.
The materials were destined for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant outside of Carlsbad, N.M. But that underground facility — the country’s only underground disposal site for transuranic waste — has been shuttered for more than six weeks after an above-ground release exposed 17 workers to radiation.
Now, the federal government is poised to send the waste to the site in Andrews County, just across the border, for storage until the repository reopens.
Chuck McDonald, spokesman for Waste Control Specialists, which operates the Texas site, said Monday that the truckloads would arrive "within the next week or two."
The company, formerly owned by the late Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons and one of few sites in the nation that is licensed to store low-level radioactive waste, has been storing contaminated items from shuttered reactors and hospitals since 2012.
"We are pleased that WCS is in a position to provide temporary storage for this waste while the WIPP is shutdown," Rod Baltzer, president of the company, said in a statement. "This will allow the Los Alamos National Laboratory to meet its goal of having this material removed by this summer so it can no longer be threatened by wildfires."
Baltzer said that all incoming canisters would be inspected to ensure that they are sealed. “WCS has a sophisticated inspection and monitoring system in the buildings where the canisters will be stored to ensure the safety of our employees and the environment," he added.
WCS said its grounds are ringed by asphalt and caliche roadways, protecting it from fires, and that the site has a sprinkler system and its own fire truck, adding that its workers are "well trained and experienced in handling this type of waste."
Citing uncertainty about when the repository will be ready to reopen, the U.S. Department of Energy has not proposed an end date for the waste’s time in Texas, but said it would last no longer than one year, according to the agency’s correspondence last week with Texas regulators.
In a March 21 analysis, the agency concluded that it could safely store the Los Alamos waste in West Texas and that the plan did not merit a new environmental review. There have been minor spills and leaks at the facility, the analysis said, but those had been localized and properly cleaned up.
"WCS has accumulated more than a decade of environmental monitoring data that show no member of the public or the environment has been affected by operations at the facility, including routine and accident risks," the analysis said.
Dale Klein, associate director of the University of Texas Energy Institute and the former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said the waste would probably be safely transferred and stored, but he questioned the logic behind moving the waste before it goes to the repository.
"Any time you have to handle the material twice, you’re exposing people unnecessarily," he said.
Environmentalists object to the idea of bringing more nuclear waste to Texas and say they would like to see further analysis of the proposal.
"They’re building a nuclear empire. It’s just one thing after another, and there’s no telling where this leads," Karen Hadden, executive director of the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition, said of the waste company, adding that state and federal regulators have rushed the decision to allow the waste transfer without using “the full and adequate science.”
Environmental groups have closely scrutinized WCS as it has expanded the scale of the waste it accepts. That includes the Sierra Club, which has challenged the site’s permits in court, saying the group was never given a hearing to voice its objections to the project — namely that groundwater would enter its disposal wells.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality granted the company initial licenses in 2007 after conducting geological studies of the area. Three staff members at the commission resigned in protest after the licenses were granted, saying they did not believe the area had been proved safe for waste disposal.
TCEQ said it would work with the Department of Energy to ensure that any material the WCS site accepts would meet state requirements.
When the Legislature paved the way for waste storage more than a decade ago, the facility was supposed to accept only waste from Texas and Vermont, but the Legislature has since expanded the site’s scope to accept waste from other states.
"It is so appalling,” said state Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth. "The way it’s evolved, Texas is going to be the sole repository, which means that decades from now, the state of Texas will be the fiscally responsible agent for dealing with the impacts of any mishaps."
Burnam, a fierce critic of WCS over the years, said he might seek a court injunction to halt the waste transfer. "That would have to come quickly," he said.
Disclosure: At the time of publication, the University of Texas at Austin was a corporate sponsor of The Texas Tribune. The Harold Simmons Foundation was a major donor to the Tribune in 2010, 2011 and 2012. (You can also review the full list of Tribune donors and sponsors below $1,000.)
REFERENCE MATERIAL
DOE to TCEQ Letter re: Waste Disposal
PDF (229.2 KB) download
TCEQ Letter to DOE re: Waste Proposal
PDF (504.8 KB) download
Analysis For Proposal to Temporarily Store Waste
PDF (295.4 KB) download
This document contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. SEED Coalition is making this article available in our efforts to advance understanding of ecological sustainability, human rights, economic democracy and social justice issues. We believe that this constitutes a "fair use" of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use", you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Court Thwarts Sierra Club’s Hazardous Waste Challenge
April 16, 2014
by Jim Malewitz
Texas Tribune
![WCS facility](http://nukefreetexas.org/images/WCS_facilty_2012.jpg)
Photo by: David Bowser
John Ward, operations project task manager at Waste Control Specialists’ facility near Andrews, Texas, walks over to inspect concrete canisters that will house drums of nuclear waste.
A state appeals court has thwarted a challenge to a hazardous waste disposal site in West Texas – a ruling that signals growing difficulties for those trying to scrutinize the decisions of Texas environmental regulators.
Depending on whom you ask, such a trend would either rightly save companies time and money or unjustly bar citizens from fully sharing their environmental concerns.
The site, a 36-acre facility in Andrews County operated by Waste Control Specialists — a company formerly owned by the late Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons — is the final resting place for hazardous waste and slightly radioactive items from shuttered nuclear reactors and hospitals, among other places.
Both the company and state regulators have repeatedly called the site safe. But environmental groups have closely scrutinized the site as it has expanded the scale of waste it accepts, raising concerns about the effects on groundwater and other resources.
The Sierra Club has long argued that state regulators never gave the organization the chance to voice opposition to Waste Control Specialists’ permits through a contested-case hearing — a drawn-out process resembling a trial in which companies and their critics present evidence and testimony in front of an administrative law judge in the hopes of swaying regulators’ opinions.
Earlier this month, Texas’ 3rd Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s ruling that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality properly denied the group a hearing because none of its members met the threshold of being a "person affected."
At issue in that Sierra Club case was one of several permits the TCEQ has granted Waste Control Specialists. The permit enabled the company to dispose of high-purity uranium metal that originated at a long-closed U.S. Department of Energy Facility that is now a "Superfund" site.
The Sierra Club said that the waste site could negatively affect two of the group’s members who lived just across the border in Eunice, N.M., putting their air and water quality at risk. That included Rose Gardner, who operates a feed store just four miles from the waste site.
But the three-judge panel said the TCEQ — whose analysis showed that the disposal site would have minimal impacts — had the authority to rule that those members were not "affected."
In making that determination, the court cited two Texas Supreme Court decisions handed down last year — TCEQ v. City of Waco and TCEQ v. Bosque River Coalition. Both involved challenges to feedlots’ wastewater discharge permits.
Cyrus Reed, conservation director for the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, said he worried the appellate court’s recent ruling would have implications that extend beyond Andrews County, giving regulators more wiggle room to deny hearings they might consider burdensome.
"Our concern is that this ruling could be applied broadly and that it would make it very difficult for folks to be granted the right to a contested-case hearing," he said. "It could also eliminate the right of all Texans to present evidence and challenge the decisions of a state agency."
In an emailed statement, the TCEQ said it was "very pleased" with the court’s decision, and that the agency takes seriously "its obligations to uphold the law — as was done in this case."
Texas is one of just a few states that allow the public to request contested-case hearings, said Jeff Civins, an Austin-based attorney who has represented companies in such hearings. In most states, citizens are invited only to submit comments to regulators ahead of a vote.
Civins said it makes sense that regulators determine who should get a hearing, because they are the ones ultimately ruling on the permits and because the process eats up a lot of resources. The process can take up to a year and cost up to $1 million a project, he said.
Jim Bradbury, an environmental lawyer who has represented clients on both sides of such disputes, said the Sierra Club ruling confirms the TCEQ’s discretion to determine who gets a hearing, but doesn’t fully erode the process. Parties who live adjacent to or directly downstream from companies seeking environmental permits will likely still draw hearings, he said.
Over the years, the hearing process has been a useful tool for concerned stakeholders, Bradbury said, but it has also been abused by groups trying to advance policy or business goals by slowing down the permitting process.
"It’s a bit of a mess," he said. "This process is used by all sides to game the system."
Citing such criticism, some state lawmakers have pitched legislation trying to change the system. Last session, for instance, state Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, wrote a bill that would have ditched the contested hearing process. That legislation failed, but Bradbury and others expect it to crop up again next session.
Meanwhile, the Sierra Club has another challenge to Waste Control Specialists pending in the same appeals court. That one concerns a license for disposal of low-level radioactive waste.
REFERENCE MATERIAL
Sierra Club v. TCEQ and Waste Control Specialists
PDF (138.9 KB) download
Disclosure: The Harold Simmons Foundation is a major donor to The Texas Tribune. A complete list of Texas Tribune donors and sponsors can be viewed here.
This document contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. SEED Coalition is making this article available in our efforts to advance understanding of ecological sustainability, human rights, economic democracy and social justice issues. We believe that this constitutes a "fair use" of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use", you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Texas Sierra Club Fight Over Radioactive Waste Heats Up
Oct. 21, 2012
by Nick Swartsell
Texas Tribune
![WCS facility](http://nukefreetexas.org/images/WCS_facilty_2012.jpg)
Photo by: David Bowser
John Ward, operations project task manager at Waste Control Specialists’ facility near Andrews, Texas, walks over to inspect concrete canisters that will house drums of nuclear waste.
Rose Gardner inflated balloons for her grandson’s birthday party recently at her floral shop in Eunice, N.M., and talked about nuclear waste.
"I’m just really respectful of radiation and its effects," she said, a reason she became involved in the Sierra Club and its legal battle with Waste Control Specialists, which operates a radioactive waste site in nearby Andrews County, Texas. "Some people may say I’ve gone overboard, but I don’t think I have."
The Sierra Club is suing on behalf of Gardner and two residents of Andrews to have its claims heard in court. In legal action against WCS dating to 2007, the Sierra Club has challenged the company’s state environmental licenses because of the discovery of groundwater in some of the waste disposal site’s 520 monitoring wells.
But officials with the company, which is owned by the Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons, say the site is safe. And Andrews County has joined the battle, suing the Sierra Club in a bid to end its legal claims.
The 15,000-acre site began receiving radioactive material in April. It has multiple disposal areas, including one for waste producers involved in the Texas Low Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact, which encompasses Texas and 35 other states.
Cyrus Reed, the director of the Sierra Club’s Texas chapter, said the site’s hydrogeological status was still uncertain and that water in Waste Control Specialists wells might mean that having radioactive material there was dangerous. The site, he said, is close to the Ogallala Aquifer, a major source of drinking water, and there are concerns that radioactive materials could seep into it.
WCS officials say the Sierra Club is simply opposed to all things nuclear.
"Their point, that those wells are saturated, doesn’t really matter," said Rodney Baltzer, the company’s president. "Any of the water they’re talking about out there isn’t groundwater; it’s infiltration from rain, and it’s not connected to the Ogallala Aquifer or some kind of well someone is drinking from. The red-bed clays underneath are like concrete."
This layer of red-bed clay, 25 to 40 feet below ground level, is the key to the disposal process, Waste Control Specialists officials say. Pits are dug in the clay and lined with concrete to contain waste, which is stored in concrete cylinders. The pits contain a water-management system that pumps rain and groundwater away from the materials into a water treatment plant, then to a man-made pond.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality granted the company initial licenses in 2007 after conducting geological studies of the area. Three staff members at the commission resigned in protest after the licenses were granted, saying they did not believe the area had been proved safe for waste disposal.
Terry Clawson, a spokesman for the commission, said the licenses were issued in compliance with Texas law and contained measures to protect health and the environment. The commission declined to comment on current legal battles between the Sierra Club and WCS
In August, Andrews County sued the Sierra Club, seeking to end its legal claims and public statements against the site. The county says the Sierra Club’s actions have scared off potential business from waste producers and have disrupted a valuable revenue stream for the county, which receives 5 percent of the company’s gross receipts. WCS made its first payment (about $620,000) to the county in August.
In a recent deposition, Andrews County Judge Richard Dolgener, who heads the county’s commissioners court, said the company had told the county it was losing money because of the Sierra Club’s actions; its lawyers met with county officials before the county sued.
Baltzer said WCS had no role in the county’s decision to sue. "They want to make sure their revenue source is safe," he said of Andrews County. "I think they could see that Sierra Club is just doing whatever they can to stop this."
Sierra Club lawyers say Andrews County’s action amounts to a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or a SLAPP suit, which is illegal in Texas.
"We’re just acting within our rights, as any citizen can, when you feel someone is acting against yours," Reed said. "The Sierra Club doesn’t exist so that Andrews County can make money."
But Lloyd Eisenrich, the president of the Andrews Industrial Foundation, which has joined the lawsuit against the Sierra Club, said the suit was about residents of Andrews County, not about the county or Waste Control Specialists trying to silence the group.
"To my knowledge, this isn’t WCS against the Sierra Club," he said. "This is the community saying, ‘We’re fed up.’ "
![Rose Gardner](http://nukefreetexas.org/images/rose_gardner_newmexico.jpg)
Photo by: Nick Swartsell
Rose Gardner inflates balloons in her floral shop in Eunice, N.M., five miles from the radioactive waste site operated by Waste Control Specialists, on Oct. 7, 2012.
Gardner said Eunice residents had no say in the site’s location. "Waste Control Specialists has been described as a remote location. Remote from Dallas? Okay. Remote from New York? Okay. But it’s right here. It’s close to my town."
Eunice, the town closest to the WCS site, is five miles from the site’s location on the Texas-New Mexico border in an area some call the Nuclear Corridor. Urenco, a uranium enrichment plant, sits next to the Waste Control Specialists site, and other nuclear facilities occupy the region.
Gardner said she worried that more nuclear-related facilities would locate near Eunice. She has undergone radiation treatment for thyroid problems, she said, and is concerned about further exposure.
The WCS site is the only one in operation to serve the Texas compact. Examples of waste at the site range from mildly irradiated bodies of rats used in medical testing at Texas A&M University to radioactive components of nuclear power plants.
Chuck McDonald, a spokesman for WCS, called the rats an example of the site’s importance.
"The rats were in the basement of a medical research facility there in Houston," McDonald said. "They had their flood several years ago, and you literally had 55-gallon drums of radioactive waste floating around, including a lot of dead, radioactive rats. There was no place to dispose of them for years."
There are things WCS does not accept, including liquid waste, John Ward, an operations project task manager at the company, said of the stereotype of nuclear waste as green ooze. "That’s a Homer Simpson thing,"he said. Ward said the site also did not take highly irradiated material like fuel rods.
WCS claims its safety precautions make its site the most secure in the country for disposing of low-level radioactive waste. But Gardner said the Sierra Club’s suits were meant to put everything in the open.
"Where’s my public hearing to voice my concerns?" Gardner said. "I don’t do this just for me. I have two girls who have their own little kids at home. They need someone to speak up for them."
This document contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. SEED Coalition is making this article available in our efforts to advance understanding of ecological sustainability, human rights, economic democracy and social justice issues. We believe that this constitutes a "fair use" of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use", you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Loving County Judge Discusses Nuclear Waste Proposal
March 27, 2014
Hudspeth County Herald
In an interview with the Herald last Wednesday, March 19, Loving County Judge Skeet Lee Jones talked about his county’s bid to become the final resting place for the nation’s spent nuclear fuel – and about how the project might move forward in the years to come.
Jones said Loving County officials began to consider the waste proposal when they were approached by representatives of AFCI Texas, an Austin-based company that is seeking to develop a long-term storage facility for high-level waste from the nation’s 100-plus commercial nuclear reactors.
The same AFCI representatives contacted Hudspeth County officials in November 2011; at that time, the company was considering a piece of state land near Fort Hancock for the project, a parcel the company had identified based on recommendations from the Texas General Land Office. Hudspeth County officials told the AFCI representatives, who included the company’s co-founder, Austin attorney Bill Jones, that residents here were unlikely to welcome the project.
AFCI’s pitch found a more receptive audience in Loving County.
Jones said that part of what had motivate his commissioners court to embrace the plan was the perception that high-level nuclear-waste storage was likely to come to the area, regardless of whether Loving County signed on or not. Loving County is situated at the edge of the existing "nuclear alley" that includes the Waste Isolation Pilot Project east of Carlsbad, N.M., the National Enrichment Facility at Eunice, N.M. and Waste Control Specialists’ low-level radioactive-waste site at Andrews, Texas. The Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, formed of officials from those two New Mexico counties, is actively lobbying for the high-level, spent-fuel facility for New Mexico, must opposite the state line from Loving County.
"What got our attention was that there was a spot picked just across the state line, within rock-throwing distance of our county," Jones said. "Instead of just sharing the risk, we thought we should try to get a return monetarily for the county."
AFCI envisions storing the used nuclear rods – a total of about 70,000 tons of waste material – in heavily reinforced casks aboveground, on concrete pads that would be spread over about 1,000 acres. Jones said county officials are considering a site in the northern part of Loving County, near the state line, as a possible location for the facility. Jones said that portion of the county has been less impacted than other areas by the ongoing boom in oil-and-gas activity.
Before going public with their interest in the project, Jones said he and other county officials had spoken with some Loving County residents about the proposal. He said there was "not a lot of opposition," though he acknowledged that, "whenever you say ‘nuclear,’ it’s like saying ‘rattlesnake’ – people get scared."
After visiting with local residents, the county judge said that he and Bill Jones and another AFCI representative had traveled to Austin, to meet with Texas General Land Office officials, Gov. Rick Perry and others, and to Washington, D.C., where they met with Texas’ two U.S. senators and with Congressional representatives for the region. Jones said that all the officials with whom they spoke welcomed the proposal.
"There was no opposition from anybody," County Judge Jones said. "In fact, there was quite a bit of support from most of the people we talked to."
The United States has been struggling with where to store spent nuclear fuel since the late 1950s. For years, a site in Nevada called Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, was planned as a waste site. Local opposition to the project intensified – and the Yucca Mountain plan was effectively scrapped in 2009.
The U.S. Department of Energy will ultimately determine the site for the high-level waste, which, in the absent of a storage facility, is currently being held on site an nuclear power plants across the country. Besides Texas and New Mexico, other states – including Nevada, Mississippi and Idaho – are in the hunt for the facility.
Joe Straus, the speaker of the Texas House, has instructed the legislature to produce recommendations on state and federal action that would be needed to bring a waste-disposal or interim storage site for the spent nuclear rods to Texas. It is unclear whether waste from Texas’ four reactors could begin traveling to a site in Loving County or elsewhere before federal officials settle on a site.
If Loving County were selected be federal officials, it would likely be more than a decade before spent nuclear fuel would begin traveling from reactors in other parts of the country to West Texas. Public hearings and a permitting process would precede the construction of a storage site, and Jones said groundbreaking on a facility was not likely to occur any sooner than 2024.
In the wake of the dispute over the Yucca Mountain, federal officials indicated that local consent would be a prerequisite for a new location. A Loving County project would probably require support not only from within Loving County but from elsewhere in the region to move forward.
Jones said there are several factors that make Loving County – and the region more generally – an attractive place for high-level radioactive-waste storage. Low rainfall is one of those factors, Jones said; if there were a leak from the site, the region’s aridity would reduce likelihood of water sources becoming contaminated. Loving County is bounded on the west by the Pecos River, and Jones said that, while the river’s proximity could be an issue of concern, the locations under consideration drain to the east, rather than towards the river.
Jones said that the spent fuel would have to be brought in by rail, and rail lines are another factor that situate Loving County well for the project. Also, the region’s sparse population is an asset for Loving County’s bid; Loving County is the least populous county in the nation – the 2010 Census recorded 82 residents – though the ongoing oil-and-gas boom has brought many temporary residents to the county in recent years.
Radioactive-waste storage elsewhere in the region has been a boon for local economies, and Jones said an interim-storage facility for the waste would create a "few hundred jobs" in Loving County. The county could also receive millions in payment from AFCI. The big economic development, however, would come if the spent fuel were to be recycled for subsequent use, Jones said.
Japan, France and other countries that rely heavily on nuclear power process and recycle spent fuel; though the recycling technology was developed in the United States, Jones said, recycling is not currently permitted here. AFCI believes that, at some point, that will change, and spent U.S. fuel could be recycled at the Loving County facility. That is part of the reason the company plans to store the waste in aboveground casks.
"The big money is in processing and recycling the spent fuel," Jones said. "Recycling would involve thousands of jobs, effecting counties across the region – you’d have people who would be driving out of Hobbs and Odessa-Midland to work here."
Whether or not the waste were recycled, Jones said the idea that a facility in Loving County or elsewhere would be an "interim storage facility," as state and federal officials sometimes suggest, was unrealistic. The weight of the material alone, he said, would mean that once it had been transported to a location, it would not be likely to be taken elsewhere.
Jones said that he believes that while the benefits of a high-level waste site outweigh the risks, it is inevitable that there will be an accident of some kind at such a facility. He said the county would need to aggressively prepare for such an event.
"Anyone that says there won’t ever be an accident – that would be a blatant lie," he said. "There’s inevitably going to be an accident – you have to be prepared. That’s the way it is with anything."
This document contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. SEED Coalition is making this article available in our efforts to advance understanding of ecological sustainability, human rights, economic democracy and social justice issues. We believe that this constitutes a "fair use" of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use", you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Talk begins of high-level radioactive waste in Andrews
![WCS facility](http://nukefreetexas.org/images/wcs_oao_pic_2014.jpg)
Workers at the Waste Control Specialists facility in Andrews unload a shipment of ‘transuranic waste’ that arrived for temporary storage on April 2 from New Mexico.
April 13, 2014
by Corey Paul, cpaul(at)oaoa.com
OA Online
In a meeting with Andrews civic leaders, Waste Control Specialists representatives recently floated the idea of storing high-level radioactive waste at their local collection site, if the community approves.
"It is something that if we had the community support of, at WCS we would be interested in being a part of that," said Chuck McDonald, a spokesman for the company.
The conversation is in early stages, and company officials have sought none of the federal permits that would be required for the significant expansion of the sort of waste it handles, McDonald said. He said the company wants to temporarily store spent nuclear fuel rods, a high-level nuclear waste. Temporarily could still mean decades, but that is opposed to permanently disposing of the waste by burying it for millennia.
The topic first came up at a March closed-door meeting of the Andrews Industrial Foundation, a non-profit economic development group, attendees said.
One of them was Andrews County Judge Richard Dolgener, who said "we are moving very slowly" and that conversation focused mostly on political and industry context instead of support for the possibility of bringing the waste.
"We are trying to get all our facts really more than anything before you start saying this or that," Dolgener said.
The dialogue begins amid two other developments involving an expanded radioactive footprint in Texas, a prospect that concerns environmental groups but also some who advocated for bringing WCS to West Texas as a low-level collection site, such as Rep. Tryon Lewis.
The first development is a series of proposals by state leaders: Gov. Rick Perry at the end of March wrote a letter to leaders of the state House and Senate that stated "We have no choice but to begin looking for a safe and secure solution for [high level waste] in Texas. . ." accompanied by a 48-page report from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality that lays out some historical background about storage attempts and options.
Perry’s letter used the phrase "Texas solution," which happens to be the slogan of Waste Control Specialists. But Perry recommends no specific storage site, and others in West Texas have also expressed interest in storing higher-level radioactive waste, such as officials in Loving County.
The governor’s letter follows a charge by House Speaker Joe Straus to the House Committee on Environmental Regulation to study bringing high-level radioactive waste, including the rules and economic impact, and then "make specific recommendations on the state and federal actions necessary to permit a high-level radioactive waste disposal or interim storage facility in Texas."
Another development is the radioactive waste that began rolling into Andrews County earlier this month from New Mexico. That waste is called "transuranic waste" that WCS was already licensed to handle, but the DOE requires that it must be handled more cautiously than the low-level waste WCS was designed to mainly deal with.
Most of the transuranic waste consists of items like clothing, tools, rags and soil contaminated with radioactive elements during decades of nuclear research and weapons production in New Mexico.
The temporary storage of the transuranic waste results from of a series of mishaps at New Mexico facilities, but it also expands the scope of the sort of waste WCS anticipated dealing with, McDonald said.
"Certainly it doesn’t hurt the case that this would be a good place to take care of some of the spent nuclear fuel storage capabilities that are now becoming a pressing issue," McDonald said.
In an announcement of the first transuranic waste shipment on April 2, the Department of Energy reported up to about 100 more shipments will be sent to West Texas in an initial ramp up with as many as 10 shipments arriving per week before the June 30 deadline to remove the waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory as part of an agreement with the state.
At first, the waste was meant to go to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, N.M., known as WIPP. But those plans were scuttled by a shutdown at WIPP after a small above-ground leak on Feb. 14 that reportedly exposed 17 workers to radiation.
WCS, a private collection site, became the next option. WCS will be paid up to $8.8 million to store the transuranic waste, the DOE reported.
Karen Hadden, executive director of the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition based in Austin, opposed moving the transuranic waste to WCS and said it seems like a step toward higher-level waste storage.
"It’s kind of never-ending," Hadden said, describing the federal and state decision as rushed and then criticizing the potential for higher level waste. "There is higher potential for accidents. They are not frequent but they do occur and you don’t want that to happen . . . It’s incredibly dangerous material."
Lewis, whose term as representative expires in January, said he has "no problem at all" with the transuranic waste storage. At an Odessa Chamber of Commerce event earlier this year, he also described his work helping to bring WCS to Andrews as one of his proudest legislative accomplishments.
But Lewis also serves on the the House Committee on Environmental Regulation, and he says he opposes depositing high-level waste in Texas and that even storing it long-term is a bad idea.
"I don’t think that is what that site is meant for," he said, even though he said the site and its workers could probably handle the waste. "Just to make money I don’t think it’s worth it to do that. Hey, let’s make a quick buck. I don’t think it’s worth it because you never know."
Instead, Lewis said the spent fuel rods from the country’s 104 nuclear power plants should be buried deep in a geological repository, at the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada. The federal government designated Yucca Mountain in 1987 and after decades of controversy abandoned development before Congress finally cut off funding in 2011. More than $15 billion had been spent.
McDonald said federal licensing and construction to store higher-level radioactive waste at WCS could happen in as little as seven years but that would all depend on community support.
Lewis said he worries an attempt to even temporarily store radioactive waste at WCS could turn into such a boondoggle as Yucca Mountain. But if it happens, he said, there should be intensive review and consultation with locals.
The county judge said so too: The first time around the community embraced the plant because they saw evidence of safe storage, but it is hard to predict sentiment now because so many have moved to the booming area since then.
The county sees a windfall of 5 percent of gross revenue from low-level waste at the storage site, where space inside runs up to $10,000 per cubic foot. The state’s is about 25 percent.
Storage of higher-level radioactive waste would probably bring more money to the county as well as skilled workers and greater economic diversification, say the judge and Westley Burnett, director of economic development at Andrews Economic Development Corporation who also attended the meeting with WCS.
But Dolgener also said higher-level storage would bring other issues such as security and more deadly material.
"It’s like having a milk plant and somebody wants to come and make ice cream because you’ve got a plant right there," Dolgener said. "But that’s really a big statement, because you’ve got to take science and law and 15 million other things into account to make that work."
Contact Corey Paul on Twitter @OAcrude on Facebook at OA Corey Paul or call 432-333-7768.
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