nuclear-news

Complicated nuclear waste problems between USA States

The prospect of losing space to waste from generators in other states worries the incoming governor of Vermont, Peter Shumlin, who has vowed to shut down that state’s reactor, Vermont Yankee.

Texas Proposal Spurs Race to Dispose of Nuclear Waste – NYTimes.com, By MATTHEW L. WALD  December 2, 2010 WASHINGTON — Aged nuclear plants in Vermont and Illinois may be playing the equivalent of musical chairs in a graveyard, vying for space at a dump in Texas whose owner hopes to accept radioactive waste from many other states.

Under an alliance struck 16 years ago between Vermont and Texas, tiny Vermont can fill up to 20 percent of the space at any low-level nuclear waste dump built in Texas’ wide-open spaces. Texas got the right to exclude other states’ waste. But as a company prepares to begin construction this month on the state’s first one, the arrangement may be jeopardized by swiftly changing circumstances.

A private company that won a contract to operate the plant, at a site in Andrews on the New Mexico border, wants to accept waste from the 36 states that do not have access to a dump for some of their waste now. And a commission made up of representatives from the two states that controls the planned dump has proposed a rule for accomplishing that…………

The prospect of losing space to waste from generators in other states worries the incoming governor of Vermont, Peter Shumlin, who has vowed to shut down that state’s reactor, Vermont Yankee. He fears that when it comes time to tear it down, there will not be enough space for its contaminated components in Texas if other plants can ship waste there first.

“It’s a race for space,” said Mr. Shumlin, a Democrat. “When push comes to shove, the first waste that arrives is the waste that gets in.”……………………….

uclear experts in Vermont suggest it would be wiser for the commission to postpone a decision on imports until it determines how much space Vermont Yankee’s waste will need.

Nuclear operators around the country are watching with interest. In Zion, Ill., north of Chicago, for example, a company called EnergySolutions is decommissioning a twin-unit reactor and plans to put the least radioactive material in its own dump, in Clive, Utah, but wants to ship slightly more contaminated material to Andrews.

The arrangement between Vermont and Texas was brokered under federal laws passed in the 1980s to encourage states to establish dumps for low-level waste. The laws allowed the forging of “low-level waste compacts,” under which a state could select a future dumping site from which other states would be turned away. (Maine was initially also part of the compact with Vermont and Texas but dropped out.)

Mr. Shumlin said he saw the hand of Entergy, a company based in Louisiana that owns Vermont Yankee, in the proposal to expand the compact. ………….
The dump, expected to cost $75 million, will be a concrete-lined hole in the ground set in nearly impermeable red clay, which is supposed to prevent the waste from contaminating underground water supplies.

“They’re trying to get it done before the new governor takes office,” said Tom Smith, director of the Texas office of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, which opposes the dump.

Texas Proposal Spurs Race to Dispose of Nuclear Waste – NYTimes.com

December 6, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes