nuclear-news

But Roberts, 29, has his eye on what he hopes will be the next big thing for the area: nuclear waste. As president of the local chamber of commerce, knows that oil booms are inevitably followed by busts.

He is supporting a plan to establish a repository in the desert about 30 miles outside of town for as much as 40,000 metric tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel and waste from power plants…….

Local support for the project is strong, said County Judge Charlie Falcon, who presides over the four-member Andrews County Commissioners’ Court, which functions as the county’s board of commissioners.

The panel approved a resolution in 2015 backing the idea to accept high-level nuclear waste at the designated site, and is likely to reiterate its support with a letter in the near future, Falcon said during an interview in his chambers in the brick courthouse on Main Street.

…….. The plan by Interim Storage Partners LLC, a joint venture between Orano CIS LLC and Waste Control Specialists LLC, calls for waste to be shipped by rail from around the country. Then it would be sealed in giant concrete casks and stored above ground for as long as 100 years, or at least until a permanent repository is built.

Opponents say that could be never…….

In the meantime, the U.S. has no permanent place of its own to store radioactive material that will remain deadly for several thousand years. …

Not everyone in Andrews is on board with the idea of storing waste that can remain radioactive for thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years.

“We don’t need to put it right in the middle of the biggest oil field in the world,” said Tommy Taylor, director of oil and gas development for Fasken Oil and Ranch Ltd. of Midland, Texas, which is part of a coalition of oil and gas producers and landowners opposed to the nuclear dump.

More than 4 million barrels of crude are produced every day in the Permian Basin and drillers say a leak or terrorist attack could put the oil boom at risk. “It would shut the whole Permian down. The result would be catastrophic for us,” he said.

Said Andrews resident Elizabeth Padilla: “It only takes one accident and we would become the Chernobyl of West Texas.”

Some surrounding counties and cities have adopted resolutions against the plan. It’s also drawn opposition from national environmental groups……….

A panel of administrative judges from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently convened a hearing at the neighboring Midland County Courthouse and heard arguments from environmentalists, oil industry representatives and other groups. Outside, protesters gathered around an eight-foot-tall, green-and-black inflatable replica of a storage cask bearing a sign reading “Say No To Radioactive Waste.”

Kevin Kamps, an official with Takoma Park, Maryland-based group Beyond Nuclear, who drove to Midland for the hearing, said in an interview that high-level nuclear waste bound for Andrews would travel through major cities.

“The transport risks are for the entire country and they haven’t even been alerted,” Kamps said.

Other opponents expressed worry about the site’s proximity to the Ogallala Aquifer, a underground reservoir that spans eight states that supplies water for drinking and irrigation to millions of people. …..

The project has powerful backers. As Texas Governor, Rick Perry encouraged storing high level nuclear waste in the state and, as U.S. Energysecretary, he has been supportive of interim nuclear waste storage. The current governor, Greg Abbott, is opposed.

Scott State, the chief executive officer of Waste Control Specialists, which is owned by J.F. Lehman & Co., said he was optimistic the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would approve the license for the project, though additional approvals, such as plans for transporting waste, need to be approved before storage can begin, he said.

Rose Gardner, a 61-year-old grandmother who owns a floral shop in Eunice, N.M., about five miles away from the proposed nuclear dump, said she will do everything in her power to stop that from happening.

“We will appeal and appeal and appeal,” she said in an interview. “We will do whatever we have to throw a monkey wrench inside their plans to open a deadly dump.”  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-24/one-texas-oil-town-actually-wants-the-nation-s-nuclear-waste