Archive for the ‘WIPP’ Category

18 June 2014

Dallas Morning News Editorial

U.S. Department of Energy
Waste Control Specialists is in talks to start receiving depleted uranium, and it wants to triple its West Texas site’s size.

The nuclear waste disposal site operated by Waste Control Specialists in West Texas is steadily morphing away from its original mission as a depository for very limited quantities of low-level radioactive items from Texas and Vermont. Today, the site is taking on much greater quantities and higher levels of radioactive waste from multiple states, and its owner wants permission to dramatically expand operations.

If this mission creep continues, Texans could find themselves the unwitting hosts of the nation’s first permanent for-profit high-level nuclear waste facility. If Waste Control’s intention is to build such a site, it owes Texans a straightforward, transparent declaration of these plans so a full public debate can occur.

This nation plunged headlong into nuclear research in the 1940s, followed in subsequent decades by production of thousands of nuclear warheads, construction of nuclear reactors and other radioactive devices used in hospitals and manufacturing. Throughout, everyone involved has confronted a nagging question: Where will all this radioactive waste be permanently stored?

No state wants such a sensitive and dangerous site. What region isn’t vulnerable to earthquakes, floods, fires or other potentially catastrophic events? With the inventory of waste continuing to rise, the only option has been to store it in temporary facilities around the country. That’s not a solution.

This waste has to go somewhere. If Waste Control’s facility northwest of Midland-Odessa is the nation’s best answer, then let’s have that discussion. Waste Control’s appearance of stealthily imposing a bigger footprint is cause for public skepticism.

When Waste Control sought a license in 2007, three members of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality resigned rather than be party to it. The site sits atop the Ogallala Aquifer, and any radiation leak could risk contaminating a major water source for eight states. Waste Control maintains that the facility is state of the art, with multiple backup measures to avert accidents.

In April, Waste Control contracted with the U.S. Energy Department to store hundreds of truckloads of waste from nearly seven decades of nuclear research at New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the world’s first atomic bomb was developed. Some of the waste comes from a temporary storage facility in Carlsbad, N.M., where radioactive leaks occurred in February.

What once was a two-state pact to house low-level waste now involves dozens of states. Waste Control is in talks to start receiving higher-level waste, including depleted uranium, at the same time it wants to triple the site’s size. Yet it wants to reduce the amount of money it is required to keep available if a disaster leads to large-scale liability claims.

Texans deserve to be part of this important discussion. But they can’t participate if they don’t even know it’s happening.

MAY 30, 2014

San Antonio Express-News Editorial Board

This is the South Texas Project electric generating station near Bay City. The state is now examining the possibility of creating a high-level nuclear waste dump. The idea raises environmental concerns. Photo: Express-News File Photo / San Antonio Express-NewsPhoto By Express-News file photo This is the South Texas Project electric generating station near Bay City. The state is now examining the possibility of creating a high-level nuclear waste dump. The idea raises environmental concerns.

SAN ANTONIO — Gov. Rick Perry is pushing for a high-level radioactive waste facility. And state Speaker Joe Straus has asked a House committee to wrestle with the issue of creating such a facility — perhaps in West Texas.

There are perfectly legitimate concerns attached; each one must be satisfactorily answered. If they can’t be, Texas simply shouldn’t allow such a facility.

Can it be safely stored?

We’re not talking about low-level radioactive waste, a site for which Texas already has. High-level radioactive waste generally involves spent nuclear rods, potentially deadly even with brief exposure. Safety must be as ironclad a guarantee as is technologically possible given the life of this waste — thousands of years. No corners should be cut.

Can it be safely transported?

Accidents and human error happen, and when they do, they will potentially affect even more people during waste transport than at a facility at a remote site. But a site in West Texas — which is widely viewed as the likely location if one is built — likely means transporting waste on Interstate 10, right through San Antonio and other population centers. Ditto, if by rail. The industry contends that casks developed for transport are safe. The committee must test that.

Can the waste be stored as effectively where it is produced?

In Texas, this would be at each of the state’s four nuclear plants.

Environmentalists credibly argue that dry cask storage at nuclear plants cuts out the middle-man — transportation. If this is the case, why create a large site with a lot of waste? To endanger only one part of the state rather than four?

Will safety or economic impact be the trumping factor?

It should be safety.

Environmentalists fear that Straus’ charge to the committee involves looking only at the economic impact of a facility. Such a site will likely be privately operated like the existing low-level site in Andrews County, run by Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists.

If this site is expanded or another picked, this means needed jobs and tax revenue. Environmental issues will be considered, the Speaker’s Office said.

"This charge was referred to the Committee on Environmental Regulation so they can conduct a thorough review for possible nuclear storage and will hear from all stakeholders to ensure that environmental, economic and regulatory issues are considered," according to a statement provided to the Editorial Board.

Will the decision be based on need or on the clout of political heavyweights?

There is the need. Like it or not, the state has four nuclear plants. These produce waste. If we use the power, we have to live and deal with the waste also generated.

But it’s been widely noted that Harold Simmons, the late owner of Waste Control Specialists, gave Perry roughly $3 million — some going to Perry’s campaign committee, other amounts to the Republican Governors Association when the governor was raising money for it.

Perry has been pushing for this high-level radioactive waste site. Part of the task for Straus’ committee is to determine whose need is being served here.

Will this be for Texas-only waste or will it take other states’ waste as well?

The federal government has botched identification and creation of a national repository. The Obama administration has given up on Yucca Mountain in Nevada. And a federal court in November, noting the disarray on this issue, told the feds they could no longer collect fees from utilities for waste storage since there is no federal facility.

States have formed compacts with other states for storage of low-level waste.

So, is Texas or a private entity operating a state site maneuvering for the state to become a national repository? And if not, are they positioning themselves to take other states’ waste?

The answer has to be "no" to both but particularly on the first proposition.

Straus’ committee should consider these and all other pertinent factors.

Hearing on “Implementing the Nuclear Waste Policy Act – Next Steps,” Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy (September 10, 2013)
Nuclear Power and Radioactive Waste Environment and Energy
Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy (113th Congress)

Sep 10, 2013

2123 Rayburn House Office Building
The Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy held a hearing on Tuesday, September 10, 2013, at 10:00 a.m. in 2123 Rayburn House Office Building. The hearing was titled, “Implementing the Nuclear Waste Policy Act – Next Steps.”

Read more and watch the committee hearing…

May 10, 2014

By Laura Zuckerman
Reuters

(Reuters) – A New Mexico nuclear waste dump, which saw a radiation leak in February, has halted shipments of toxic waste barrels to a commercial Texas facility amid concerns that chemical reactions could trigger another release there, officials said on Friday.

A probe found the February 14 accident may have been linked to improperly prepared and packaged drums of toxic waste accepted from the Los Alamos National Laboratory by the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), its managers said in a statement.

Investigators are still evaluating whether a chemical reaction caused the leak of unsafe concentrations of radiation in the underground salt caverns where waste is stored, which exposed 21 workers above ground to low levels of contamination.

"As they evaluate this possibility, it is prudent to temporarily stop shipments of this specific (Los Alamos lab) waste stream" to a commercial storage facility in Texas, managers said.

The WIPP complex in the Chihuahuan Desert in southeastern New Mexico was designed to permanently seal in salt chambers clothing, tools and other materials contaminated with radioisotopes like plutonium from U.S. nuclear labs and weapons sites.

There may have been chemical reactions between nitrate salts in radiological materials and organic materials such as plastic packing in barrels of waste from the Los Alamos lab, Jim Blankenhorn, deputy manager with the contractor running WIPP, told a public meeting on Thursday.

Fifty-five of the suspect barrels were stored in the salt chamber where the accident happened and additional drums from the same waste stream are in a separate disposal area below ground, Blankenhorn said.

Los Alamos chemists are seeking to develop a process for filtering out the nitrate salts before packing and shipping containers of waste, he said.

The repository is not expected to resume operations for at least 18 months but it may take as long as three years to be fully operational, Blankenhorn said.

(Reporting by Laura Zuckerman in Salmon, Idaho; Editing by Eric M. Johnson and Clarence Fernandez)

CCNS NEWS UPDATE
Runs 5/9/14 through 5/16/14

(THEME UP AND UNDER) This is the CCNS News Update, an overview of the latest nuclear safety issues, brought to you every week by Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety. Here is this week’s top headline:

* LANL waste shipments suspended

On May 2nd, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced that some nuclear waste shipments from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to Waste Control Specialists (WCS) were suspended for an undetermined amount of time. The reason for the stoppage was that one or more LANL waste containers may have exploded underground and caused the February 14th radiation release from the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). However, DOE continues to state that the cause of the radiation release is unknown, but that it is investigating all possible scenarios.

Neither DOE nor LANL publicly identified the specific group of containers, called a waste stream, that are included in the shipment suspension. Nor have they publicly stated how many of the suspect containers are at WIPP and WCS and how many remain at LANL.

The suspended waste stream is LA-MIN02-V.001, which is the source of 54 of the 268 contact-handled waste containers in room 7, panel 7, at WIPP, where the radiation release may have originated. Another 116 containers from that waste stream are now at WCS. The waste stream was created by plutonium operations at LANL that are continuing at Technical Area 55.

The containers hold a portion of the 3,706 cubic meters of plutonium-contaminated waste that is the subject of the January 2012 Framework Agreement between the New Mexico Environment Department and LANL. The agreement states that it is non-binding, but LANL committed to removing all of that waste from Area G by June 30th, 2014. http://www.nmenv.state.nm.us/documents/Summary_of_NNMCAB_01-5-2012.pdf

When WIPP was closed in early February, about 100 shipments remained at LANL to meet the June 30th date. Since those shipments could not go to WIPP, DOE agreed to pay WCS $8.8 million to receive and store those wastes for up to one year.

The Environment Department has insisted that LANL meet the June 30th date, but not the deadlines for other cleanup activities included in the Consent Order that require wide-scale cleanup by 2015. Since October 2011,the Environment Department has issued more than 95 extensions of time for LANL to submit groundwater protection and cleanup investigation reports required by the Consent Order. http://www.nmenv.state.nm.us/HWB/documents/LANL_Extensions_as_of_4-7-2014.pdf The Framework Agreement does not give the Environment Department any power to impose fines and penalties to LANL for missing the June 30th deadline, while NMED does have that power under the Consent Order.

Joni Arends, of CCNS, said, "Both LANL and the Environment Department put all of their eggs in one basket by focusing on getting the waste off the Hill to WIPP instead of doing all of the work required under the Consent Order. Now, we still have waste at LANL – with more being created – but many of the important Consent Order activities have not been done."

This has been the CCNS News Update. For more information, please visit http://www.nuclearactive.org and like us on Facebook.

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Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety (CCNS)
P. O. Box 31147
Santa Fe, NM 87594-1147
(505) 986-1973
www.nuclearactive.org