Archive for the ‘WCS’ Category

Mar 20, 2014

BY JOSEPH J. KOLB
Reuters News

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (Reuters) – The Los Alamos National Laboratory has found a temporary home in Texas for roughly 1,000 barrels of radioactive junk left in limbo after a radiation leak led to a prolonged shutdown of New Mexico’s only nuclear waste disposal facility.

Los Alamos, one of the leading U.S. nuclear weapons labs, said earlier this month it had been forced to halt shipments of its radioactive refuse some 300 miles across the state to the nation’s only underground nuclear repository, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, near Carlsbad.

The repository has remained closed while the U.S. Department of Energy investigates the origins of a radiation leak that occurred there on February 14, exposing at least 17 workers to radioactive contamination. It was the first such mishap since the facility opened in 1999.

That left a quandary for Los Alamos, which faces a strict June 30 deadline to dispose of roughly 1,000 temporary storage drums of radiation-contaminated waste. The lab said on Thursday that waste would be sent to the Waste Control Specialists facility in Andrews County, Texas.

The waste that will go to Texas includes clothing, tools, rags, debris, soil and other items contaminated with low levels of radiation, Los Alamos said. It will be held in Texas temporarily, pending the reopening of the New Mexico repository.

According to Los Alamos lab spokesman Matt Nerzig, the waste will begin to be shipped to the temporary site in early April, ahead of the June deadline set by the state environmental department to remove it from the Los Alamos campus.

Established during World War Two as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the world’s first atomic bomb, Los Alamos remains one of the leading nuclear weapons manufacturing facilities in the United States.

A massive wildfire that raged at the edge of the complex in 2011 burned to within a few miles of a collection of radioactive waste drums temporarily stored at the site. Since then, Energy Department and state officials have made the removal of the waste a top environmental priority.

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Cynthia Osterman)

March 21, 2014

Kenneth Fletcher
Los Alamos Study Group

While the Department of Energy this week announced that it plans to send transuranic waste from Los Alamos National Laboratory to Waste Control Specialists for temporary storage, there is a tight time frame for completing preparations for the shipments. DOE has committed to New Mexico to completing its campaign for removal of aboveground transuranic waste by a June deadline, despite the indefinite shutdown of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Shipments to WCS will need to start in early April in order to meet the deadline, according to DOE. However, they cannot take place until the completion of a National Environmental Policy Act analysis—and it is unclear how long that will take.

WCS expects to be able to accept the "vast majority of the remaining LANL waste," according to company spokesman Chuck McDonald. However, a portion of the LANL material that may not meet criteria for acceptance at WCS may need to either be sent to another DOE site for temporary storage or repackaged before being sent to WCS. "Based on evaluations to date, we predict that the vast majority requires no additional repackaging or recertification. However, the detailed review of the inventory is still continuing," a DOE spokesperson said.

Waste Will Go From WCS to WIPP After Startup

The waste in question is the last portion of 3,706 cubic meters of transuranic waste stored aboveground at LANL that were targeted in a framework agreement with New Mexico for removal by June—a deal brokered after a wildfire in 2011 threatened the material. The campaign had been in its final stages when WIPP shut down indefinitely last month due to two incidents: a salt truck fire and a radiation release. DOE officials have promised to meet the June deadline. "The LANL waste will be staged so that it can be disposed of as soon as WIPP resumes waste receipt operations," J. R. Stroble, DOE’s Director of the National Transuranic Program, said in a statement. "These shipments will be managed just like other WIPP shipments. The Department will continue to evaluate potential alternatives for other DOE transuranic waste generating sites until WIPP is fully operational."

This week WIPP contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership said it would subcontract with WCS to stage the waste at the commercial low-level waste disposal facility about 75 miles from WIPP. "A letter contract was awarded on Monday, not to exceed $500,000. It anticipates a definitized contract in the near future, which will have more specific terms. It is DOE’s intent that NWP acquire temporary staging only until WIPP resumes operations," the DOE spokesperson said. NWP spokesman Donavan Mager said in a written response: "The terms and conditions are still be negotiated as part of a final contract to be completed by the end of March."

WCS Will Place Waste in Covered Facility

The LANL waste will be placed in an indoor covered storage facility at WCS. "The WCS workforce is well trained and experienced in handling this type of waste," WCS President Rod Baltzer said in a statement. "We will inspect all incoming canisters to insure that they are sealed and there has been no breach. WCS has a sophisticated inspection and monitoring system in the buildings where the canisters will be stored to insure the safety of our employees and the environment." Baltzer also emphasized that WCS has never had a wildfire, and that the storage facilities have a sprinkler system and there is a fire truck on site.

State Applauds the Move

New Mexico Environment Department Secretary Ryan Flynn applauded the move. "Governor [Susana] Martinez has worked aggressively and effectively with the federal government to make sure they fulfill their promise of removing the above-ground transuranic waste at Los Alamos and storing it in a safe and appropriate manner," Flynn said in a statement. "She continues to work them to accomplish this goal on schedule, which is critical in light of the rapidly approaching fire season. It’s up to experts at DOE to determine what steps they need to take to do this job safely and properly, and up to New Mexico and Texas to ensure this is done within the confines of our regulatory requirements. We are very encouraged by DOE’s effort to keep the 3706 campaign on track even under these difficult circumstances."

‘The Problems With This Plan are Legion’

But the WCS option was met with skepticism by Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group, an activist organization. "The problems with this plan are legion," Mello said in an e-mail. Finishing the NEPA analysis in time "will set some sort of speed record," Mello said. Problems also include the need to transport the material twice and load and unload it twice. "This is all about appearances and public relations and visual impact (hidden is better, some say)," Mello said. He continued: "There is no significant fire danger for this waste at LANL. Upon information and belief, most flammable drums have been shipped and there is essentially no danger of wildfire, the surrounding vegetation having been burned."

But Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) also hailed the decision. "Removing waste from the mesa in Los Alamos before fire season is critical to ensure safety in the greater Los Alamos community," Udall said in a statement. "The state’s June 2014 deadline was firm and non-negotiable, as I made clear in repeated conversations with Energy Secretary [Ernest] Moniz since the Feb. 14 accident at WIPP. I’m pleased we have a temporary solution that will ensure there will not be any significant disruption in cleanup efforts. By law, WIPP is the only permanent repository for TRU waste from Los Alamos and other nuclear weapons facilities, and I look forward to continued progress in the recovery March 21, 2014 Weapons Complex Monitor # ExchangeMonitor Publications, Inc. 7 efforts. In the meantime, I will be pressing DOE for details about its transportation plan, including the impact on roads, traffic and security through Southeast New Mexico. DOE needs to ensure the resources are in place for safe transportation and security."

April 16, 2013

By Asher Price, Staff
Austin American-Statesman

In this Oct. 14, 2009, photo provided by Waste Control Specialists, canisters filled with uranium byproduct waste are placed into a burial pit at a site in Andrews County. People living nearest to the site would be barred from challenging license amendments sought by the company under a Senate bill that could be voted on as early as Wednesday. (AP Photo/Waste Control Specialists, File)

The Sierra Club’s efforts to thwart a radioactive waste dump in West Texas could be derailed if a Panhandle state senator succeeds in blocking residents of New Mexico from challenging it in Texas courts.

The proposal by state Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, might get a vote on the Senate floor this week. It could effectively cut off the Sierra Club’s challenge to a radioactive waste site in Andrews County, just miles from the New Mexico border, owned and operated by Waste Control Specialists.

The Sierra Club sued in 2009, asking for a contested case hearing on behalf of its members who live in Eunice, N.M., just west of the state line.

Contested case hearings amount to minitrials in which members of the public and others with standing can protest a permit. The judge overseeing the hearing makes a recommendation to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

In 2012, a state district judge granted a contested case hearing, based on issues raised by the Sierra Club’s New Mexico members. That decision has been appealed to a state district court of appeals.

Seliger’s proposal faced tough questions at a Senate Natural Resources Committee meeting in late March.

"Why would we limit affected parties to three sides and not the fourth?" state Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, asked Seliger, referring to New Mexico residents, who actually live much closer to the facilities — within a few miles —than virtually any Texans.

"Folks who live in New Mexico still have access to federal courts for any remedy they want," said Seliger, whose campaign in December 2011 and again in March 2012 received donations of $10,000 from WCS-Texas Solution PAC. (Waste Control Specialists is controlled by investor Harold Simmons, a chief donor to Gov. Rick Perry’s campaigns.)
"They’re still property owners; they’re still Americans — whether they be on north side or west side or east side of the plant," Duncan said. "They should still be offered the opportunity" to protest the plant’s permit.

Seliger’s bill would also expand the amount of higher-level radioactive waste the dump may take while not increasing the overall cap on radioactive material at the site.
In 2003, lawmakers permitted Waste Control Specialists to take low-level waste from Texas, Vermont and federal facilities.

Seeking to handle more lucrative forms of waste, the company asked lawmakers to allow it to import more, and in 2011 they agreed but limited imports to 30 percent of the landfill volume.

The Seliger proposal would allow the company to import more highly radioactive waste.

Increasing the import limit could pump an additional $1.25 million a year into the state’s general fund and Andrews County, which each receive 5 percent of the dump’s gross receipts, according to estimates by the Legislative Budget Board.

The facility employs 170 people.

Passing the measure will allow Waste Control Specialists "additional flexibility and allow it to stay strong," said Rodney Baltzer, president of the company.
Cyrus Reed, conservation director of the Lone Star chapter of the Sierra Club, said in a statement that the proposal "not only reflects a lack of respect for the neighboring state, but it invites possible litigation for failing to recognize the rights and concerns of residents who are virtually neighbors to this radioactive waste site."

April 17, 2013

By BETSY BLANEY
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Lubbock Avalanche-Journal

People living nearest to a radioactive waste dump site in Andrews would be barred from challenging the company operating the facility under a bill opponents say further caters to the business.

Senate Bill 791 also encourages members of a compact, Texas and Vermont, to send their low-level waste elsewhere, allows for the company to take in additional, more radioactive material per year and seeks to prohibit public hearings or comment on some changes to the company’s license.

The bill from Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, could be voted on as early as Wednesday, April 17. A similar bill has been filed in the House.

Residents of Eunice, N.M., live less than 10 miles from Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists’ 1,300-acre radioactive waste burial ground. Under the bill, they would no longer be able to claim to Texas licensing officials their well-being is affected by the dump. The bill allows for challenges from Texas residents in Andrews County, home to the dump site, and any adjacent Texas county.

Eunice native Rose Gardner has long objected to the dump site, believing that leaks will lead to groundwater contamination. She said she’s long known that someday the company would try to silence her objections.

"There isn’t a Texan living near the state line," the 54-year-old flower shop owner said. "They live 37 miles away in Andrews. And we’re sitting here like little kids playing tiddlywinks."

Company spokesman Chuck McDonald said that part of the bill might not remain. He said Seliger spoke to Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, about a proposed amendment.

"I think it’s really a moot point based on the exchange I heard in committee," McDonald said.

A call seeking comment from Seliger was not immediately returned Tuesday, April 16.

The nuclear waste dump site, whose majority owner is billionaire and GOP mega-donor Harold Simmons, accepted its first low-level radioactive waste about a year ago, ending an expensive and yearslong effort by the company to bury materials from medical, research and industrial activities and from nuclear power plants. Also buried there is PCB-tainted sludge dredged from the Hudson River in New York and tons of Cold-War era radioactive waste from a former uranium-processing plant in Ohio.

Environmental groups have opposed the company’s continual pressing for various types of waste to bury in the remote scrub brush terrain about 375 miles west of Dallas.

"It’s just always something more and I have to wonder where this will end," said Karen Hadden, executive director of the Texas SEED Coalition.

Originally the site was to handle low-level waste from compact states, but last legislative session lawmakers approved allowing waste from more than three dozen states to be buried at the facility.

Seliger’s bill also seeks to promote sending low-level waste, known as Class A, out of Texas for burial and ups the annual radiation limit for the next two years from 220,000 to 300,000 curies so that states outside the compact can dispose of hotter waste, known as Class B and C.

The company, Andrews County and the state stand to make more money from the hotter waste. The county receives 5 percent and the state 25 percent of the company’s revenues quarterly.

Lawmakers should play an active role in regulating any future plans by the company to expand the site’s capacity and any change in its license, including the forms, types or streams of waste, Duncan said.

"The Legislature should impose limits on volume and radioactivity in that site," he said. "If those need to be changed later on those limits should be changed through the legislative process."

The bill includes prohibiting public comment or hearings on minor amendments to the license, which is regulated by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The bill defines minor as "a change in the type, volume or concentration limits of wastes to be received to the extent the change does not increase the total volume and curie capacities approved" in the existing license.

McDonald said the license is valid and operations are underway, making the commission the agency to handle regulation.

"They should be the ones to determine if the waste stream meets the waste acceptance criteria," he said. "It’s taking place safely and securely and TCEQ needs the ability to manage it."

That’s not the view of Marisa Perales, an attorney representing the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club in a contested case hearing that a judge last year ruled should have occurred. Waste Control is appealing that ruling.

"It seems to me that what’s occurring is that TCEQ, WCS, the legislature are trying more and more to keep the public out of the process," she said.

MAY 1, 2013

BY DAVID BARER
StateImpact Texas

Update, May 1, 2013: The Senate has passed SB 791. The bill could allow states around the U.S. to import more of the "hotter" radioactive waste into a West Texas disposal facility and limit contested case hearings. Several amendments to the bill were passed, including ones that would make generators of radioactive waste responsible for the cost of transportation accident cleanup, allow for random audits of shipments of radioactive waste into the site and affect the Compact Commission Executive Director’s ability to modify disposal licenses. The bill now moves to the House Environmental Regulation Committee.

Original story, March 26, 2013: A controversial new bill could encourage states from around the country to send waste with higher levels of radiation to Texas. The legislation prompted some heated debate at a Senate Natural Resources Committee meeting today at the Capitol.

The bill, SB 791, by Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, would allow "hotter" radioactive waste into West Texas’ only radioactive waste disposal site, which started running last year after many years of controversy and debate, which continued in part today.

The disposal site is owned by Waste Control Specialists, a company owned by Dallas billionaire and top Republican donor Harold Simmons.

Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, a member of the committee, is concerned that the overarching goals and purpose of the Waste Control Facility are diverging from their original purpose. Initially, the site was meant to be a safe receptacle for all of Texas’, and other compact members’, dangerous radioactive waste, he said.

Now, "we are going to encourage more importation of higher radioactive waste," Duncan said.

The majority of storage space at the 1,300 acre site is designated for members of the Texas Low Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission, which only includes Texas and Vermont. The crater-like disposal site is the only one in the nation built to store all three classes of low level waste — A, B and C. Class A waste is the least radioactive and most voluminous, Class C is the most radioactive but has lower volumes.

Texas already imports waste from states around the country that are not part of the compact. Fees for out-of-compact waste are higher than waste from firms within the compact. B and C Class waste brought into the site would have to be compacted by a factor of three, according to the bill.

Companies in Texas will be encouraged to export their Class A waste, with its lower levels of radiation, to cheaper sites outside Texas, such as the disposal site in Clive, Utah.

The bill would also limit the amount of people entitled to a contested case hearing – a way regular citizens can air their grievances to the state about the disposal site – to only people living nearby the far West Texas facility.

State Sen. Duncan was troubled with those portions of the bill. At the meeting, he said that while Seliger had done a fine job authoring legislation related to the waste facility in the past, "this seems to be expanding on that in a direction that I don’t think we ever intended to go when we started on this journey," Duncan said.

The bill would entitle only those living in Andrews County or an adjacent Texas county to a contested case hearing. New Mexicans would be restricted from the hearings, even though thousands of New Mexicans live within 20 miles of the facility. They would have to use federal courts as recourse, Seliger said.

That was the rub for Duncan, who said Texas shouldn’t encourage the involvement of the federal government in disposal site issues.

"They are still Americans, whether they be on the West side, the North side or the East side of the plant. They ought to be allowed the opportunity to be heard on that, shouldn’t they?"

Rod Baltzer, President of Waste Control Specialists, testified in favor of the bill and said it would benefit Andrews County and Texas.

The site has so far generated $7.5 million for the state’s general revenue fund, and about $1.5 million for Andrews County. Another $3.2 million is projected to go into Andrews County’s coffers in the next 12 months. The site also provides about 170 non-oil-and-gas jobs for Andrews County, Baltzer said.

All Andrews County revenues for the 2012-13 budget amount to about $24.7 million, according to an Austin American-Statesman report.

The new legislation wouldn’t hurt Waste Control’s bottom line, either.

"Is there an economic motivation? Absolutely, there is," State Sen. Seliger said. "There’s more money in B and C waste. There’s also no other place for it to go."

The committee did not vote on the bill today, leaving it pending in committee.

David Barer is a reporting intern with StateImpact Texas.