nuclear-news

Texas – “bring me your poor huddled masses of radioactive waste”

some environmental groups said the plan would provide an incentive to the nuclear-energy industry to expand without coming up with better places to store its refuse.

“It’s defying logic to make more waste that we don’t have a good place to put,”……Opponents say a conflict of interest exists between the commission,

Texas to Take States’ Radioactive Discards – WSJ.com, 5 Jan 2011, By ANA CAMPOY A  Texas commission Tuesday set in motion the importation of low-level radioactive-waste from 36 other states, a move long sought by the nuclear-energy industry and long opposed by environmentalists.The Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission, which manages the state’s radioactive-waste dump, voted 5-2 to approve rules governing the process for accepting the out-of-state material.

The decision drew a quick response from the plan’s opponents, some of whom opposed the idea because the site is near the Ogallala aquifer that provides drinking water to several states.

“We’re going to consult with our lawyers and probably sue them,” said Tom “Smitty” Smith, director of the Texas office of Public Citizen, a consumer watchdog group. Mr. Smith, who said the commission violated rules in the public-comment process, was present at the panel’s meeting in Andrews County, in remote west Texas, where the storage site is located.

The plan enjoyed the backing of the nuclear industry, which is now limited to three other such storage sites in the U.S…..
Controversy had surrounded the proposal in part because the dump, set to open by year’s end, was conceived and built to take waste from only two states—Texas and Vermont……
The site will permanently store low-level radioactive waste—contaminated materials and equipment from nuclear plants, research laboratories and hospitals. The material includes everything from parts from dismantled nuclear-energy plants to booties worn by scientists working in labs where radioactive materials are present. More highly contaminated waste, such as spent fuel from power plants, wouldn’t be stored at the site.The waste will be stored at the 1,338-acre site in concrete-reinforced underground units.

States are responsible for handling low-level radioactive waste produced within their own borders, but space for it is limited. And the three disposal sites for it in the U.S. don’t take all kinds of materials within the low-level category or can only take waste from certain states. That leaves 36 states without a permanent storage place…….

some environmental groups said the plan would provide an incentive to the nuclear-energy industry to expand without coming up with better places to store its refuse.

“It’s defying logic to make more waste that we don’t have a good place to put,” said Diane D’Arrigo, an expert with the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a nonprofit group based in Takoma Park, Md. that advocates against new nuclear plants.

In Texas, activists also said that the state would be stuck with liabilities if the site leaks.

The controversy was tinged with Texas politics. Opponents say a conflict of interest exists between the commission, most of whose members were appointed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and the site’s owner, Waste Control Specialists LLC, whose main investor, Harold Simmons, is a donor to Mr. Perry.

Texas to Take States’ Radioactive Discards – WSJ.com

January 6, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes