Archive for the ‘WIPP’ Category

May 9, 2014

By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN
Associated Press

The head of the recovery effort at the federal government’s nuclear waste repository in southern New Mexico said Thursday it could be up to three years before full operations resume at the underground facility.

Recovery manager Jim Blankenhorn made the announcement when answering questions from the public during a weekly meeting in Carlsbad. He said the timeline continues to be a moving target, but full operations are expected to resume no earlier than 18 months from now.

Crews continue investigating the cause of a radiation release at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad that exposed some workers and halted operations in February.

Specially trained workers have been making trips into the repository in an effort to pinpoint the source of the release. Based on those trips, the focus has turned to a set of waste drums that came from Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Officials at the meeting reiterated the possibility that there may have been a chemical reaction inside the drums. They were then questioned about what would happen to that waste if it’s deemed unsafe to store.

"If we find a problem with this waste stream, it’s a chemistry problem," Blankenhorn said. The Los Alamos lab has "some of the best scientists in the world. It would be up to them to develop a path forward to give us treated, safe waste."

New Mexico Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn said the theory of a chemical reaction is based on limited knowledge, and he urged officials during the meeting not to withhold any information. Flynn said he’s concerned the public will lose faith if federal officials change their story every couple of weeks about what might have happened.

"We need to know what happened. We absolutely need to know," he said. "But we need to make decisions based on facts."

WIPP and Department of Energy officials vowed to continue to update the public on the recovery process and to keep the safety of their workers and the public in the forefront.

Officials have pointed to safety as the reason they decided earlier this month to halt shipments from Los Alamos to a temporary storage facility in West Texas. The shipments had been going on for about a month due to the closure of the plant.

Los Alamos is under a tight deadline to get the plutonium-contaminated waste off its northern New Mexico campus before wildfire season peaks. The state of New Mexico pressured the lab to hasten the cleanup after a massive wildfire in 2011 lapped at the edges of lab property.

Lab Director Charlie McMillan said Thursday during a news conference in Albuquerque that the recent developments "are very much a cause for concern." But he said it was too soon to tell if they will have any effect on the lab’s ability to meet the state’s deadline.

Deadly High-Level Radioactive Waste: Health and Safety Concerns About Storage and Disposal

April 30, 2014
For Immediate Release

Contact:
Karen Hadden, SEED Coalition, 512-797-8481
Tom "Smitty" Smith, Public Citizen 512-477-1155

Download press release in pdf format for printing

Austin, TX – A nuclear expert, a medical doctor, and an attorney joined public interest advocates to address the health and safety risks of bringing the hottest of nuclear reactor waste, the spent nuclear fuel rods, to Waste Control Specialists’ (WCS) dump in Andrews County, Texas or another Texas site. The legal issues involved were discussed as well.

Governor Perry and Speaker Straus are pushing consideration of importing dangerous radioactive waste for storage and possibly disposal in Texas, and the House Environmental Regulation Committee will hold a hearing on the issue in the near future.

The Interim Committee charge is to "study the rules, laws, and regulations pertaining to the disposal of high-level radioactive waste in Texas and determine the potential economic impact of permitting a facility in Texas," said Rep. Lon Burnam, of District 90, Ft. Worth. "Examining the risks of importing exceedingly dangerous high-level radioactive waste into Texas seems to have been left out, but is very important for protecting our health and safety."

"High level radioactive waste can be a major threat to health and well-being. Obviously the effects are dependent on the quantity, the strength of the radioactivity, and the length of exposure that occurs. As with many health threats, growing children and babies in the womb are particularly at risk and vulnerable," said Dr. Elliot Trester, of Texas Physicians for Social Responsibility. The effects of radioactivity can be immediate and have long term consequences as well. The fact that the nuclear components of spent fuel rods can last for centuries and still be lethal is particularly disturbing."

According to a new report by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, an unshielded person a meter away from high-level radioactive waste would receive a lethal dose and die within a week and the waste Legislators are considering bringing to Texas for is four times hotter than this in terms of radioactivity.

"Used nuclear fuel rods contain plutonium and uranium isotopes, many of which have long-half lives and remain dangerous for thousands of years or longer," said Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. Reprocessing of this waste is expensive and not a viable solution. In general, the best approach for now is to move as much spent fuel as possible out of spent fuel pools and store it in dry casks on site. Moving spent fuel needlessly increases risks."

"Science, not politics, must come first. Extensive research is needed and the right combination of geologic setting, engineered barriers, and repository sealing and closure systems is crucial for long-term disposal and should be done before site selection starts. The standard setting process for the failed Yucca Mountain repository was poor. When the site didn’t meet the proposed standard, a new standard was mandated, instead of a new site. Public health protection standards should be set before site selection begins," said Makhijani. An independent institution, apart from the Department of Energy, is needed if effective oversight is to be achieved.

"The nuclear industry and its numerous political and government apologists refused to listen to common sense for decades and continued to generate spent nuclear reactor fuel as though we had disposal all figured out. True to history, the industry targets areas for dumps that lack political clout, like West Texas, the next proposed nuclear sacrifice zone," said attorney Robert Eye.

For decades it was believed that much commercial nuclear power waste would be reprocessed and that a disposal site would become available for high-level radioactive waste. A long, expensive series of failures showed these assumptions to be false. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 and amendment in 1987 made the federal government the regulator of spent nuclear fuel, with a repository to be developed by the DOE and licensed by the NRC.

Federal and private efforts to construct an interim storage site failed and Nevada fought efforts to make Yucca Mountain the nation’s geologic repository. Faulty science, and legal and political battles led to DOE spending nearly $15 billion on the site, which hasn’t been constructed. Funding was halted in 2011.

The US Government disposes of high-level radioactive waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, near Carlsbad, New Mexico. The site had recently been considered as a possible location for high-level commercial waste, but it has closed following both an underground fire and an airborne release of plutonium. The site’s future is un\certain.

The NRC’s Waste Confidence Rule arose from their decision not to "continue to license reactors if it did not have reasonable confidence that the wastes can and will in due course be disposed of safely," said Bob Eye. "This rule is used in reviewing new reactor licenses and license renewals. The timeframe for getting disposal capacity in place is slipping dramatically. Several states and environmental groups petitioned for review of the rule. The NRC halted licensing decisions until they complete a Generic Environmental Impact Statement (GEIS) and revise federal code, which is scheduled for completion by September 2014." The rule change would allow spent nuclear fuel to be stored for 60 years after reactor shutdown.

Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission said that a pilot interim storage facility could be in place by 2021, a larger storage facility by 2025, and a geologic repository by 2048. The Government Accountability Office says that several decades would be needed to transport of the spent nuclear fuel to a geologic repository and they anticipate that most US reactors closing by 2040.

"We don’t need or want this deadly, dangerous waste which every other state has rejected, or the risks it poses to our health and safety," said Tom "Smitty" Smith, director of Public Citizen’s Texas Office. "The Blue Ribbon Commission said that high-level waste storage or disposal isn’t likely to happen without state and local support. Unfortunately, Governor Perry and some Texas Legislators actually think dumping this waste on Texans is a good idea. Our fear is that the Legislature will pass resolutions asking Congress to designate our state for the unnecessary storage or disposal of spent nuclear fuel. We will fight this horrible idea."

"We don’t need our rivers and land poisoned by some of the deadliest contaminants on Earth. We don’t need children threatened by radiation poisoning, from leaks or transportation accidents. It’s time to stop producing these deadly materials and to prevent their importation," said Karen Hadden, director of the SEED Coalition. "We should reduce threats from crowding in existing spent fuel pools, where critical reactions can occur and lead to nuclear meltdowns, by moving spent fuel into dry casks and storing it onsite."

For more information:

• NukeFreeTexas – www.nukefreetexas.org
• PSR: http://www.psr.org/environment-and-health/environmental-health-policy-institute/radioactivity-and-health.html
• IEER – http://ieer.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/ManagingSpentFuel-BRC-2010-slides.pdf

April 19, 2014

By Joseph Baucum
Reporting Texas
Austin American-Statesman

Texas House Speaker Joe Straus recently raised eyebrows among environmentalists and individuals connected to the nuclear waste industry. Unexpectedly opening the possibility of making Texas home to America’s supply of high-level radioactive waste will do that.

The United States lacks a permanent disposal site for 68,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel after the Obama administration decided in 2010 to halt funding for the multimillion-dollar Yucca Mountain geologic repository in Nevada. Straus has instructed legislators to determine whether Texas can be the answer and "make specific recommendations on the state and federal actions necessary to permit a high-level radioactive waste disposal or interim storage facility in Texas."

Gov. Rick Perry has endorsed the idea as well. "I believe it is time to act," he said in a March 28 letter to Straus and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst.

In an effort to avoid a replay of the decades-long controversy over Yucca Mountain, where the federal government imposed the site on unwilling local interests, the onus is ostensibly on local communities to step forward to host the nation’s most hazardous nuclear waste. The consensus-based approach is designed to be more democratic, but with millions of dollars potentially at stake for the state and officials tied to the waste industry, critics say determining Texas’ future in high-level waste could be politics as usual.

A new bottom-up approach was one of several recommendations from a 2012 Blue Commission Report to the Department of Energy. Former U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., was co-chair.

"We think that looking at siting decisions not only in our country, but across the world, it’s a very complex set of negotiations that have to take place among a lot of actors at the local, state and federal level," Hamilton said in an interview.

In the consent-based approach, state and local governments would encourage communities to volunteer as host sites, instead of the top-down model employed at Yucca Mountain.

Hamilton said any area serving as the nation’s disposal site would benefit from jobs generated during construction and subsequent operations. A substantial amount of money for the project would come from a $30 billion nuclear waste fund, which is fed by fees the federal government has collected from nuclear power plants since 1983. The plants now store spent fuel on site.

Texas environmental groups including the Sierra Club, Public Citizen and the SEED Coalition oppose the idea of Texas taking on high-level nuclear waste.

Waste Control Specialists, which operates a low-level waste facility in Andrews County, west of Midland on the New Mexico border, would like to be involved if lawmakers vote to move forward. WCS, based in Dallas, is the only company in Texas handling low-level waste disposal. It’s also the only destination for some of the most radioactive low-level waste in America.

The House Committee on Environmental Regulation will carry out Straus’ instructions. Six of the nine members are Republicans. Through a spokesperson, chair Patricia Harless, R-Spring, declined to comment on whether the committee would use the consent-based methodology recommended by the commission report. The report was the primary influence on Straus’ decision to add the issue to the committee’s agenda before the Legislature convenes again in 2015, a spokesperson for the speaker said.

Between legislative sessions, the speaker customarily instructs the various House committees to explore and report on a set of issues. The interim charges, as they are called, signal his priorities for the next Legislature.

Billionaire Harold Simmons, who died in December, owned WCS, and a Simmons family trust now owns a majority of the stock. Simmons was one of the nation’s most generous Republican political contributors, donating more than $25 million to Republican super PACs in the 2012 presidential election, according to Forbes.

Simmons donated $2,500 to Perry during his failed bid in the last presidential election. Contran Corp., another Simmons business, donated $1 million — more than any other contributor — to Make Us Great Again, a super PAC that supported Perry’s campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Straus has received $100,000 since 2011 from WCS-Texas Solution, a political action committee run by WCS. Seven members of the environmental regulation committee have received $42,000 from WCS-Texas Solution in that time period. Their total contributions in the same period from all sources were nearly $3.5 million.

WCS has generated $16 million in revenue for the state since beginning disposal of low-level waste in July 2012, according to the company’s website. Texas receives 25 percent of the facility’s gross disposal fees. WCS does not disclose financial reports, but spokesman Chuck McDonald estimates the company’s revenues at $40 million annually.

McDonald says the company did not speak with Straus’ office about the committee charge but would like to be considered, if Andrews County and the state are amenable. He says community leaders would need to show interest before WCS pursued anything.

"We have been in dialogue with the community, and we’ll continue to be," said McDonald. "If our host community says, ‘This is something we’re interested in and this is something we’re comfortable with,’ WCS would like to be part of the solution."

Austin-based AFCI Texas is also interested in whether the committee identifies any communities that would be receptive to a disposal site. The company has been in talks with several West Texas counties about building an interim storage facility for spent fuel now held at the Comanche Peak nuclear power plant in Somervell County and the South Texas Project in Matagorda County, according to AFCI co-owners Bill Jones and Monty Humble.

AFCI would need federal approval to store the used nuclear fuel as well as a license for transporting it to the site, but the company is interested in the House committee’s findings to gauge Texans’ level of comfort with the idea.

"I don’t want to sound so arrogant as to suggest that if the state were fundamentally opposed to it that we’d still be enthusiastic about pursuing it," said Humble. "I don’t think we would."

The legislative committee hasn’t scheduled any hearings, but the panel will hold public hearings and take testimony from anyone interested in the issue, a spokesperson for Harless said.

In the past, the committee has sided with industry, according to Cyrus Reed, conservation director of the Texas chapter of the Sierra Club. He points to its failure to pass measures including stricter regulation of coal plant emissions and improving awareness on mercury emissions. Harless’ office declined to respond to his comments.

"Generally, the committee is not going to pass something that industry is very opposed to," said Reed. "They’ll look more for solutions that industry can live with."

Reed said he doesn’t think current committee members are closed to environmentalists’ concerns, however. He cites compromises the committee struck during the 2013 Legislature when it allowed WCS to accept low-level waste from out of state but gave permission to handle less than it had wanted.

The main concern, according to Reed, is what legislation could come out of Straus’ charge.

"Once you put out an idea, it can gather its own steam," Reed said. "There’s a concern from our point of view that you start putting out there that we’re studying it, and suddenly everybody says, ‘Texas is going to step up to the plate and provide these services. We better write legislation so we can make that happen.’ "

McDonald, the WCS spokesman, said he thinks the process will be fair. He noted that the legislation authorizing the company to accept waste from other states passed by a 131 to 10 vote, with 70 percent of Democrats voting yes.

"There have always been changes and compromises made to the legislation," said McDonald. "I think it’s fair to say that what has emerged has been, legitimately, consensus legislation. That’s why it’s had strong bipartisan support."

About this story

Reporting Texas is a news website produced by the University of Texas School of Journalism. For more, go to reportingtexas.com.

Feb. 12, 2014

by Jim Malewitz
Texas Tribune

Photo by: Jennifer Whitney
A spent fuel pool at the South Texas Project Electric Generating station near Palacios. STP Nuclear Operating Company, the station’s operator, is building dry cask storage to house spent fuel once its pools fill up. Because the federal government has breached its contract that guaranteed permanent waste storage, U.S. taxpayers will foot the bill, through the government’s judgement fund.

Could Texas’ wide-open spaces help solve the country’s nuclear waste storage problem?

House Speaker Joe Straus wants to find out. He has instructed lawmakers to study the economic potential of storing highly radioactive nuclear waste in Texas, a notion that has drawn pushback from environmentalists.

But if past and present politics are any guide, the state, already home to some low-level radioactive waste, won’t house the higher-level waste any time soon — even if Texans agree they want it.

"I did not expect this to be brought up," said Dale Klein, associate director of the University of Texas Energy Institute and the former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "I just don’t see any movement. It’s a real stalemate."

Amid Washington’s long-thwarted search for a final resting place for the roughly 70,000 metric tons and counting of spent nuclear fuel and other highly radioactive waste, many observers echo Klein’s assessment. Meanwhile, waste continues to pile up at temporary storage facilities at operating and shuttered reactor sites throughout the country.

Now, Texas lawmakers are set to consider whether the state could be part of the solution and, if so, how Texas might benefit.

In interim charges released in late January, Straus instructed the House Environmental Regulation Committee to "study the rules, laws, and regulations pertaining to the disposal of high-level radioactive waste in Texas and determine the potential economic impact of permitting a facility in Texas."

Straus also told the committee to "make specific recommendations on the state and federal actions necessary to permit a high-level radioactive waste disposal or interim storage facility in Texas."

Erin Daly, a spokeswoman for Straus, said the speaker’s idea came after he reviewed a 2012 report from the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, assembled by President Obama, which recommended that U.S. lawmakers focus on gathering state and local consent before proposing a new facility.

Straus has offered few specifics on the idea, such as where a Texas facility might be. That would be for the House committee to decide.

“The speaker looks forward to the committee’s review of the issue and their detailed report,” Daly said.

Texas, with its ample space and arid climate, could be an ideal home for the nation’s nuclear waste, some observers say.

"You’ve got a large state with so much potential," said Brian O’Connell, director of the Nuclear Waste Program for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners from 1999 to 2013. "You’ve got lots of wide-open spaces."

In 1984, Deaf Smith County, which nudges the New Mexico border in the Texas Panhandle, was among three finalists for a repository before lawmakers chose Yucca Mountain. The issue divided the community, which sits atop the Ogallala Aquifer; it pitted farmers and ranchers concerned about risks to groundwater against merchants hoping the site would add jobs and tax revenue, spurring the local economy.

A 2003 University of Nevada, Las Vegas study estimated that a repository at Yucca Mountain would add $228 million to Nevada’s economy each year during construction and $127 million annually during operation. The study also said the government would need to construct a robust outreach program to prevent potential economic losses, such as businesses uprooting due to the stigma surrounding nuclear waste.

Partly because of the past objections, Deaf Smith is unlikely to resurface as a possible host, said Klein. State lawmakers are more likely to eye communities in West Texas. Officials in Howard and Loving counties have expressed interest.

But the idea of housing the waste anywhere in Texas has stirred angst among environmental groups, who, just hours after Straus released his plans, had already rebuked it.

"It’s idiotic to even consider disposing of high-level radioactive waste in Texas. Other states have rejected having high-level radioactive waste dumped on them," Tom "Smitty" Smith, director of Public Citizen’s Texas office, said in a statement. "It’s all risk and very little reward for Texans."

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 Nevada’s 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 Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat — has thwarted the project. And, facing significant political pressure, the Obama administration has abandoned the Yucca plans.

That has left untapped a $30 billion waste disposal fund collected from U.S. electricity ratepayers. Meanwhile, as nuclear power generators foot the bill for interim storage at their reactors, they are winning large breach-of-contract disputes against the federal government, which had promised to take the waste off their hands by 1998. The U.S. Department of Energy expects those payments to total $21 billion by 2020. That means taxpayers are essentially paying twice for disposal.

Texas is already home to one of the nation’s few facilities that accept low-level nuclear waste. Since 2012, Waste Control Specialists in Andrews County, a company that was formally owned by the late Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons, has disposed of contaminated tools, building materials and protective clothing, among other items, from shuttered reactors and hospitals.

Environmentalists have closely scrutinized the company as it has broadened the scale of the waste it accepts, and the Sierra Club 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.

"It just seems like the goalposts constantly move," said Cyrus Reed, conservation director for the group’s Texas chapter.

Even if Texas asks for consideration, Congress would need to change the 1987 law naming Yucca Mountain as the nation’s repository for high-level radioactive waste. The U.S. House and Senate remain sharply divided on the issue.

While the Senate, led by Reid, seeks to look beyond Yucca Mountain, the House wants to see the project through, citing the large investments already made.

"Billions of dollars, both public and private, have been invested in developing the storage facility at Yucca Mountain. We can’t just abandon this project," U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis, said in a statement to The Texas Tribune. "The debate in Washington is more about politics, than practical science and it doesn’t look like a solution is coming soon."

In the time it takes Congress to ultimately reach a consensus, turnover in state legislatures could mean that Texas or any other state that might ask host a site will change its mind.

Still, advocates of permanent storage say they will monitor discussions in Texas, hoping the talk will educate more people about a political standoff that’s costing U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars.

"Any interest outside the Beltway is positive," said Everett Redmond, director of nonproliferation and fuel cycle policy at the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington.

With the difficulties in mind, some — Barton included — have suggested permitting one or two centralized facilities to temporarily store the waste while Washington continues to wrangle over the long-term site. Such a plan would not solve the long-term disposal issue, but it would remove responsibility from electric generators and halt the lawsuits against the federal government.

Developing even a temporary site, however, could take as long as 10 years, Redmond said.

Texas lawmakers will also study the feasibility of bringing to the state an interim facility, which would store waste from around the country, according to Straus’ instructions.

"I would welcome one of those facilities in Texas, as long as the community welcomes it," Barton said.

REFERENCE MATERIAL
83rd Interim Charges
PDF (289.2 KB) download

Neena Satija contributed to this report.

April 1, 2014

by Jim Malewitz
Texas Tribune

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