Interest builds in West Texas storage of high-level radioactive waste

Apr 21 - Corey Paul Odessa American, Texas

 

Gov. Rick Perry fueled interest in West Texas when he sent a letter last month saying the state has "no choice" but to begin looking at storing high level radioactive waste in Texas.

Speaker of the House Joe Straus had already issued an interim charge to the House Committee on Environmental Regulation to study bringing in the waste and "make specific recommendations" on what would be necessary to make it happen.

But approval ultimately rests with the federal government, and that can be slow going, said Dale Klein, associate director of the University of Texas Energy Institute. Klein knows this first-hand as the former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission until 2010.

"I think the only point of raising anything now is maybe public awareness," Klein said. "Substantially, there is not a lot that can and will happen until there's federal action. At this point, it's mainly posturing, and maybe, hopefully, some public education."

Still, even groups that oppose storing high-level radioactive waste in Texas consider it a likely development in coming years.

"The No. 1 criteria for radioactive waste [storage] in this country is a willing host state, and if a Republican governor sticks up his hand and a Republican controlled House, the Congress is going to go along with any state that's willing to take it," said Tom "Smitty" Smith, director of Public Citizen's Texas office.

In Andrews County, officials of the Waste Control Specialists low-level disposal site continue talks with local leaders about the possibility of bringing high level nuclear waste to Texas for interim storage. The waste would be spent fuel rods, which are kept at the nation's 104 nuclear power plants. Interim storage could still mean decades, experts say, until a permanent geological repository is built so the waste could be buried deep underground.

Perry referred to a "Texas solution" in his letter, echoing the "Texas Solution" slogan of WCS. But Perry never endorsed a specific site.

And there is an effort underway in Loving County that would compete. There, two lawyers who co-own Austin-based AFCI Texas LLC are negotiating with a landowner for land in the northwestern part of the county, said Monty Humble, one of the co-owners. The other is Bill Jones, former general counsel to Perry.

Humble declined to name the landowner.

Loving County officials have expressed interest in establishing a storage site.

"Money," explained County Judge Skeet Jones. "What other reason do you think? It's going to be money for our coffers."

And, he said, a way for Loving County to survive. The county is the nation's least populous with 84 residents and it depends on the oil boom. Jones said that "locally there is not a lot of opposition."

And the hope is that AFCI could move from storing high-level nuclear waste to eventually reprocessing that waste for a reactor, like other major users of nuclear power in the world do. But that would likely require Congressional action and take a lifetime before a reprocessing facility could get built, Klein said.

In Andrews, talk began in March at a closed-door economic development meeting. WCS spokesman Chuck McDonald said company officials had not sought permits to expand the facilities scope and would not do so without community support.

But he said the recent delivery of "transuranic waste" from New Mexico after a series of problems at facilities there could bolster the company's case for seeking to store high-level radioactive waste. Licensing for higher-level waste could take as little as three years, McDonald said. Humble, who said he and Jones have talked to state and federal officials, offered a similar timeline.

"I think there are parts of the federal government that do seem to be eager to see a solution, but it is not that there is any sort of unanimous idea about what a solution ought to look like or whether interim storage is a part of it," Humble said. "From discussions I've had, it appears that the executive branch, at least the Department of Energy, needs clear instructions from the Congress and is not doing anything while it waits to receive those instructions."

Establishing an interim storage site for high-level radioactive waste would require an environmental study, then an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before construction -- and Klein said that could indeed be a three or four year timeline.

But mid-term elections are also approaching, and so is a campaign season for the 2016 presidential contest. Politics could hamper the process for the Department of Energy and for Congress, Klein said, where plans for the geological repository at the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada were scuttled after billions of dollars spent and decades of controversy.

"Until the DOE and Congress take action, you are sort of in a holding pattern," Klein said.

Contact Corey Paul on Twitter @OAcrude on Facebook at OA Corey Paul or call 432-333-7768.

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