Archive for the ‘WIPP’ Category

March 16, 2017

JIM MALEWITZ
The Texas Tribune

AUSTIN, Texas (TRIBUNE) – Texas is trying to take the federal government to task for failing to find a permanent disposal site for thousands of metric tons of radioactive waste piling up at nuclear reactor sites across the country.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday night, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accuses U.S. agencies of violating federal law by failing to license a nuclear waste repository in Nevada — a plan delayed for decades amid a highly politicized fight.

Paxton’s petition asks the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to force the Nuclear Regulatory Committee to cast an up-or-down vote on the Yucca Mountain plan. It also seeks to prevent the federal Department of Energy from spending billions of dollars in fees collected from utilities on efforts to find another disposal site before such a vote.

“For decades, the federal government has ignored our growing problem of nuclear waste,” Paxton said in a statement Wednesday. “The NRC’s inaction on licensing Yucca Mountain subjects the public and the environment to potential dangerous risks from radioactive waste. We do not intend to sit quietly anymore.”

Paxton filed the lawsuit just two weeks after former Texas Gov. Rick Perry was sworn in as the agency’s leader. And it comes as Texas’ only radioactive waste site — run by Waste Control Specialists in Andrews County — is asking the NRC to let it temporarily store the nation’s spent nuclear fuel.

About 78,000 metric tons of spent uranium rods are stored at operating or closed reactor sites throughout the country, with 2,610 metric tons in Texas. Those sites, mostly meant to be temporary, are filling up.

Though the nuclear energy industry insists that temporary waste disposal — either in pools or sealed in dry casks of metal or concrete — is safe and environmentally sound, it has long agreed that sealing the waste in geologic formations deep underground boosts protection against terrorist attacks and natural disasters, such as the earthquake and tsunami that rocked Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in 2011.

For more than 20 years, Washington saw Yucca Mountain as the solution, and the federal government spent tens of millions of dollars preparing it to accept the waste. But Nevada’s congressional delegation — led by now-retired U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, a Democrat — has thwarted the project. And, facing significant political pressure, President Barack Obama’s administration abandoned the Yucca Mountain plans by failing to fund an NRC review.

“The NRC was never able to carry out its task to determine whether that site was safe,” said Dale Klein, associate vice chancellor for research at the University of Texas at Austin and a former NRC chairman under George W. Bush and Obama. “It was really frustrating that we were not able to do our job because of political reasons.”

Since 1983, utility ratepayers across the country chipped in billions of dollars to fund a waste repository — including $815 million collected from Texans. With interest, Texans have contributed $1.5 billion to the fund, managed by the Department of Energy.

A 2013 federal appeals court ruling halted the collections, and the fund now has an unspent balance of $40 billion, according to Paxton’s lawsuit, which opens with a comment from Perry during his confirmation hearing as energy secretary:

“My hope of this committee and administration is that we, finally after 35 years of kicking the can for whatever reason, we can start … moving to temporary or permanent siting of this nuclear waste.”

A Perry spokesman did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

During Perry’s tenure as governor, Texas became home to one of the nation’s few facilities that accept low-level nuclear waste. Since 2012, Waste Control Specialists, a company formerly owned by the late Dallas billionaire and Republican donor Harold Simmons, has disposed of contaminated tools, building materials and protective clothing, among other items, from shuttered reactors and hospitals.

That site in Andrews County grew rapidly during Perry’s final years in office. Over the objection of environmental groups, the company is seeking a licenseto temporarily store spent reactor fuel — high-level nuclear waste.

If Paxton’s suit does not force President Donald Drumpf’s administration to restart the Yucca Mountain plans, some observers say the federal government might more closely eye the Andrews County site — a move that would require Congress to change that 1987 law naming Yucca Mountain as the nation’s repository.

Asked whether Paxton’s lawsuit had anything to do with Waste Control Specialists’ expansion plans, Kayleigh Lovvorn, his spokeswoman, said her office had no comment.

Chuck McDonald, a spokesman for Waste Control Specialists, said the company had not yet read the lawsuit, “therefore, we don’t know if it will have an impact on our project or not.”

But he added: “WCS has always been supportive of a permanent repository, and we believe a consolidated interim storage facility is needed as part of an integrated waste management system in the U.S.”

Karen Hadden, executive director of the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition, a group fighting the Andrews County site’s expansion, agreed with Paxton’s criticism of the Yucca Mountain process — “a waste of money,” she said. But Hadden worries that the lawsuit could force the government to permit a site ill-equipped to protect public health and safety.

“It’s really important that we get a permanent repository in place that will isolate this waste so we don’t have cancer effects or deaths from contamination today or into the future,” Hadden said. “My concern is that [Paxton] has another Texas permanent disposal site in mind.”

Disclosure: The Harold Simmons Foundation and the University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune. A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors can be viewed here.

June 19, 2015

Hudspeth County Herald

Though he said he is not prepared either to "rubber stamp" the proposal or to "veto it immediately," Culberson County Judge Carlos Urias said Monday (June 15) that he believes a majority of elected officials and county residents support a plan to make the county the destination for the nation’s spent nuclear fuel.

Urias said that he thinks a majority of commissioners would vote to support the radioactive-waste proposal now – but that Culberson County officials remain in an "information-gathering" mode. He said he would likely bring the matter before commissioners in August.

"Being rural, we don’t have too many opportunities for new businesses," Urias said. "There are benefits in terms of jobs and tax revenues. When you mention ‘nuclear’, there are concerns – I understand that.

"It’s a controversial venture," he said, "but if the people of Culberson County support it, I will not hesitate to put it on the agenda and to support it."

Urias’ comments came after a June 11 public meeting in Van Horn – at which the most outspoken of the roughly 80 attendees opposed the nuclear-waste plan. But Urias said that about 50 of those 80 attendees – including most of those who spoke in opposition – were not Culberson County residents. And he said that opposition from non-county residents would not intimidate Culberson County officials or deter them from supporting the project.

"It’s a Culberson County decision," Urias said, "not a Hudspeth or Jeff Davis or Brewster or Reeves County decision."

Urias expressed frustration at news reports – specifically a piece by Midland’s NewsWest9 television – that claimed there was no local support for the proposal. He said those reports were based on comments from non-county residents. Urias said the station had not spoken with him or any of the other Culberson County elected officials, from the City of Van Horn or the school district, who were present at the June 11 meeting and support the project.

The construction in Culberson County of a long-term storage facility for high-level radioactive waste would be a major change in the West Texas landscape – and could pose risks to regional residents far beyond Culberson County. At the June 11 meeting, speakers cited the effects of a potential leak on the environment and human health – and on the possibility of the site being the target of a terrorist attack. Waste would be transported by truck or rail, creating additional risks in the region.

The facility could begin by storing spent fuel from nuclear power plants in Texas – in Somervell and Matagorda counties – but is ultimately planned as the destination for spent fuel from all of the nation’s 100-plus commercial reactors. The spent fuel is some of the most dangerous radioactive waste the country produces.

Waste companies have said that a West Texas facility could be an "interim" storage site for the spent fuel – though that interim could last as long as a century, and the dangers of the waste would continue far longer than that. Opponents note that safety standards can deteriorate over time. They cite the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, near Carlsbad, N.M. – the facility received high marks for safety after it opened, in the 1990s, but in 2014 was the site of multiple radioactive leaks.

Culberson County is the latest in a list of sites in West Texas and eastern New Mexico that have been proposed for the project. For years, a site in Nevada called Yucca Mountain was planned for the spent fuel. After sustained local opposition, the Yucca Mountain project was effectively abandoned in 2009, and the hunt for a new site began.

In Culberson County, an Austin-based company called Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative, or AFCI-Texas, proposes to store spent nuclear fuel about 40 miles east of Van Horn – on land 9 miles north of Kent and Interstate 10. AFCI is reportedly negotiating for the purchase of "several thousand acres" of the Apache Ranch from the Dan A. Hughes Company. The Dan A. Hughes Company is a Beeville, Texas-based oil-and-gas company. The Apache Ranch property is just beyond the northern end of the Davis Mountains, and is about 10 miles from both the Jeff Davis and Reeves county lines.

At the June 11 meeting, held at the Karen D. Young Auditorium in Van Horn, AFCI principal Bill Jones described the company’s plan. Nuclear waste would be stored above-ground, in steel canisters encased in concrete. Jones showed diagrams of circles, 150 miles in radius, extending from potential storage sites – showing the area that could be affected in a catastrophic, "worst-case scenario" disaster at the site. Such a disaster would likely involve an attack or explosion, rather than a leak. The affected area would include most of Hudspeth County and much of the Davis Mountains and Big Bend area.

Dr. Sean McDeavitt, a Texas A&M nuclear engineer who said he is not in the employ of AFCI, also spoke at the meeting. He emphasized the security measures that would be in place in the transportation, storage and monitoring of the waste.

AFCI says the project would take six to eight years to complete, and it could be a decade or more before the site received radioactive waste.

AFCI says the project would involve a capital investment of $154 million, tax collections of $10 million a year and the "potential for significant future expansion and development." The company has said that construction of the facility would employ about 180 people, and that about 100 people would be employed to maintain the facility.

The Kent site is not the first West Texas property AFCI has considered for the project. In November 2011, Jones and Humble met with Hudspeth County officials, to discuss a plan to store the waste north of Fort Hancock. Hudspeth officials rejected the proposal.

AFCI also approached the community of Big Spring, in Howard County. And in March 2014, officials in Loving County announced that they had met with AFCI representatives and would welcome the project. The Loving County proposal appeared to have the support of state and federal officials. It is unclear how the project was derailed and why AFCI is now exploring a different site.

There are other proposals to store the high-level waste in the region. Waste Control Specialists operates a radioactive-waste facility in Andrews County, east of Midland, and has applied for a permit to take on the high-level spent fuel. And a coalition of officials in Eddy and Lea counties, in New Mexico, is seeking to bring the waste storage to their area. AFCI representatives have said that if Culberson County does not embrace the project, it could be exposed to the risks of nuclear-waste storage, without any of the benefits.

The approval of Culberson County officials is not a legal prerequisite for AFCI’s project in the county. But after the controversy over the Yucca Mountain plan, the U.S. Department of Energy is pursuing a "bottom-up" approach to finding a storage site for the waste. Federal officials hope to find a community that will invite or support the project. At present, most spent nuclear fuel is kept on-site at reactors – but the federal government has collected fees from nuclear plants for long-term storage, and the company that wins the contract stands to profit from that fund, which totals about $30 billion.

Urias said that the project is not guaranteed to come to Kent – even if county officials vote to support it. But he said that even with the competition, the AFCI principals "seem to be confident" about their odds. Jones served as general counsel to Gov. Rick Perry, and Perry later appointed him to the Texas A&M board of regents and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission.

"They seem to have a lot of clout," Urias said.

Dan Hughes, owner of the Apache Ranch, recently served as chairman of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission, and he currently serves on the Texas A&M College of Geosciences Advisory Council; Hughes and AFCI’s Jones may have become familiar through their participation with the two institutions. Hughes also sits on the board of the Borderlands Research Institute, at Sul Ross State University.

Urias said that accepting the waste site would come with other benefits for Culberson County. Federal officials would be eager "to sweeten the deal" in any way they could, he said, and federal funding could be made available to construct a new school campus in Van Horn.

"If I wanted to, I could pass it now – but that’s not what I’m here for," Urias said. "We’re looking at the whole picture. It’s not like opening up a Walmart."

Thursday, June 18, 2015

By Olivier Uyttebrouck, Journal Staff Writer
Albuquerque Journal

U.S. Department of Energy officials told a public meeting Wednesday that a radiation release last year at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant should have no bearing on whether the federal Environmental Protection Agency recertifies the long-term performance of the repository.

Russell Patterson, the DOE’s certification compliance manager for WIPP, also said that the agency doesn’t require EPA recertification to resume operations at the low-level radioactive waste repository.

WIPP, a deep geologic repository near Carlsbad, has remained closed since a February 2014 underground fire and a radiation release. Nearly two dozen employees were contaminated with low levels of plutonium and americium. DOE officials have said WIPP could reopen in a limited way by March 2016. Cleanup is expected to cost $500 million.

About 50 people attended a meeting Wednesday at the Albuquerque Embassy Suites when EPA accepted public comment as part of WIPP’s recertification process, which is required every five years.

Don Hancock of the Southwest Research and Information Center, a WIPP watchdog group, contends DOE’s own recovery plan for reopening WIPP calls for the completion of EPA’s recertification review. But Patterson responded that the statement was a mistake and that DOE has authority to reopen the repository without recertification.

Patterson said DOE must show that WIPP will remain safe for 10,000 years after the repository is closed to get EPA recertification.

"No aspect of the fire or the burst drum affect any assumptions used in the long-term performance of the repository,&quot Patterson said. &quotThe ability of the repository to isolate waste for a very long period of time has not been affected.&quot

Jon Edwards, director of the EPA’s radiation protection division, said the New Mexico Environment Department must approve a resumption of operations at WIPP, and that EPA &quotexpects to be part of the process.&quot But Edwards and other EPA officials declined to say whether EPA approval is required to reopen the repository.

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Hannah Northey, E&E reporter
E&E Daily

The Obama administration’s call for solutions to the country’s nuclear waste problems got a response yesterday from a company proposing the construction of an underground storage facility in southeastern New Mexico to store casks of used fuel.

Holtec International Inc. announced its proposal at an Albuquerque news conference alongside officials from two counties — Eddy and Lea — which have a combined population of about 110,000 people in New Mexico’s "nuclear corridor."

Holtec President and CEO Kris Singh said the project’s underground cavities could store waste in canisters for a century. The $5 billion venture, he said, will use technology that has been tested around the world.

"It has no reaction with the environment. Zero," he said. "In terms of accidents created by man … it’s essentially immune."

The project’s endorsed by Gov. Susana Martinez, a rising star in the Republican Party, who touted the project in a letter to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz earlier this month. She cited the site’s arid, isolated location and support from surrounding communities with a history of managing projects like the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad.

"There is a significant and growing national need for such an interim facility," Martinez wrote. "Millions of taxpayer dollars are currently being spent on monitoring and oversight of spent fuel each year, and millions more are being spent on settlement payments related to waste disposition."

But New Mexico’s Democratic senators were less enthusiastic.

Sens. Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall said they would prefer that a permanent, national waste repository be sited before New Mexico embraces highly radioactive material.

Heinrich in a statement said southeastern New Mexico should be commended for its leadership in the nuclear industry, but cautioned, "We can’t put the cart before the horse."

"I cannot support establishing an interim storage facility until we are sure there will be a path forward to permanent disposal," he said. "There must be an open and transparent process that allows for input on what’s best for our entire state."

Udall called the discussion "premature" amid the Department of Energy’s investigation into a radioactive leak at WIPP. An independent board appointed by DOE earlier this month found the accident was "preventable" and that the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which ships nuclear waste to the site, did not implement the proper packing and treatment procedures for its waste (E&ENews PM, April 16).

"I’m not comfortable supporting anything in New Mexico until I know what’s on the table, and regardless, this conversation is premature," the senator said. "We shouldn’t be talking about this while the state and DOE are still addressing the serious accident and radiation release at WIPP."

Udall said his primary focus is on reopening WIPP safely and protecting workers, adding that he fought to ensure the site did not accept high-level waste when it was first opened. Any future nuclear waste mission, he said, would need broad support throughout the state before he would consider supporting it.

"It’s putting a dangerous cart ahead of the horse to build an interim disposal site without a plan for permanent disposal — whether the site is built in New Mexico or anywhere else in the country," he said. "The Blue Ribbon Commission report said such sites need to move in ‘parallel,’ and I am very concerned about the risk that nuclear waste could be orphaned at a site that was not designed for permanent storage."

While Holtec’s Singh said the company had overcome technological challenges, he was unable to offer similar assurances on the political front. Singh said it would require support from all levels of government — federal, state and local — and from Congress and the executive branch.

"These people operate in policy areas that are way above my pay grade," Singh said.

‘You’ve got your work cut out for you’

Singh also acknowledged that there are competing locations for storage sites and that DOE would need to be involved.

Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists LLC has proposed building the nation’s first private, temporary storage site for spent reactor fuel in an arid corner of West Texas. The company is slated to ask the Nuclear Regulatory Commission next year for a license to build an interim storage site in Andrews County, about 350 miles west of Dallas (Greenwire, Feb. 9).

Moniz told a Senate hearing last month that the Texas proposal was "extremely interesting" and that he was keen to learn more.

Singh said Holtec would submit its application to NRC in about a year and that the project could transition from a pilot to a commercial venture.

He also said the interim storage facility, the details of which are still being worked out, fits "perfectly" within the Obama administration’s waste strategy.

The administration is open to alternatives for storing waste after deciding in 2010 to abandon the decades-long effort to open a nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain, Nev., in the face of fierce political and legal opposition. A commission appointed by President Obama to study the nation’s nuclear-waste dilemma later recommended that the nation move beyond the Yucca Mountain mess and come up with a workable long-term plan for waste disposal.

Moniz in March announced that DOE would begin identifying and vetting a defense-waste-only repository and separate sites for one or more interim facilities for old fuel from shuttered reactors. But Moniz also made clear that DOE will need congressional approval — and more authority — to actually build the facilities (E&ENews PM,March 24).

In New Mexico, the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, a consortium of city and county governments, has been advocating the proposed interim storage site for years, noting that it’s a national security issue and no one else wants the waste (Greenwire, Feb. 3, 2012).

John Heaton, a special energy assistant to the mayor of Carlsbad, said the alliance has met with stakeholders, industry and the NRC to vet the project. Securing an NRC license, he added, could take three years. He also said he expects the arrangement would lead to incentives for the state and host communities.

But at least one comment at the press conference signaled that the public — or at least environmental groups — will take convincing.

One commenter asked how residents near transportation routes leading to the site would be included in the dialogue. Heaton responded that trucks heading to WIPP are under close surveillance and accidents are rare to nil.

"Those are the kinds of things we expect to play on when we go through the rail adoption system," Heaton said, adding that the waste would be transported by rail in dry casks. "We’re going to have to go to community to community and state by state just like we did with the WIPP project."

November 6, 2014

By The Associated Press

CARLSBAD, N.M. (AP) – A pair of air samplers at the nation’s only underground nuclear waste repository detected low levels of radioactive contamination after workers restarted one of the fans at the facility in southeastern New Mexico, officials said Thursday.

They confirmed the contamination was well below levels that would affect the environment or workers at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.

"At no time were employees, the public or the environment at risk," the U.S. Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office said in a statement.

The fan, which is part of the underground ventilation and filtration system, was restarted in late October as part of the lengthy process of bringing the plant back online after a canister of waste from Los Alamos National Laboratory leaked inside a storage room.

That radiological release in February contaminated 22 workers and forced closure of the plant.

Officials had expected some residual contamination in the adjacent ductwork and interior workings of the fan since it was running for two months following the incident.

As a precaution, workers took shelter inside buildings before restarting the fan last month and stayed in place for 30 minutes until it was determined to be safe.

Slightly elevated levels of airborne contamination were identified at an air sampler located at the end of the exhaust duct where filtered air exits the underground facility. Contamination was also detected by a second sampler about 60 yards away from the fan.

Officials said the results for the remaining samplers were either below the minimum detectable concentration or within the range normally observed at the site.

The Carlsbad Field Office said it would continue to monitor the air samplers to ensure there are no changes in the readings.