New Bill Would Open Door to Nuclear-Waste Storage in West Texas
A Texas congressman has introduced legislation that would shift the nation’s nuclear-waste policy and could open the door for the long-term, above-ground storage of spent nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive waste in West Texas.
Introduced by U.S. Rep. Michael Conaway, R-Midland, on Sept. 29, the Interim Consolidated Storage Act of 2015 would make federal money available for the above-ground, “interim” storage of high-level waste. The legislation could benefit Waste Control Specialists, the company seeking to store the waste in Andrews County, west of Midland, and WCS officials have confirmed that they worked with Conaway’s office in drafting the bill. But none of the companies that have proposed storing high-level waste in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico could move forward without the changes included in the bill.
Conaway’s legislation would amend the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. That law prohibits the introduction of “interim” storage facilities for spent fuel in the absence of a final, “deep burial” repository for the waste.
Federal officials have struggled for decades with where to dispose of spent fuel from the nation’s commercial nuclear reactors – which is some of the most dangerous waste the country produces. A plan to bury the waste at Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, stalled in 2010, and spent fuel is currently stored on-site at nuclear power plants.
In recent years, multiple proposals have emerged to store the waste on an “interim” basis in West Texas or southeastern New Mexico; most recently, Austin-based AFCI-Texas has proposed storing the waste in Culberson County, north of Kent. Companies proposing the projects concede that the “interim” could last a 100 years or more. None of the projects could proceed without an amendment to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
Utility companies with nuclear power plants contributed for decades to a federal Nuclear Waste Fund – and that fund, which exceeds $30 billion, was intended for the construction of a final repository for spent fuel. Conaway’s bill would allow money from that fund to be paid to companies storing the waste on an interim basis, with appropriations not to exceed the annual interest generated by the fund.
Critics of the bill say that the creation of interim storage sites is unnecessary – and creates profound risks both in the short and long term. Arjun Makhijani is a nuclear engineer and president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and has testified before Congress and served as an expert witness before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He said that the nation’s nuclear establishment has “never seen a storage site it didn’t like,” and that it was likely regulators would “discover the interim site was a wonderful site” for the permanent storage of high-level waste.
“I have long held that moving waste to an interim storage site without a repository in operation risks the interim storage site becoming a permanent storage site,” he said.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruled in 2014 that indefinite above-ground storage of high-level waste is safe – based on the assumption that the U.S. government would continue to manage and fund the site for thousands of years. Makhijani noted that the ruling was issued during a shutdown of the federal government.
“We are in a surreal place,” Makhijani said, “where the current regulation is that surface storage could last forever – and you have to depend on the government. Is it reasonable to assume that the government will be around and do its duty for thousands of years?”
Makhijani said that the short-term risk of an accident at a storage site was low, but that creating an interim storage facility would be “creating one more site that is vulnerable.” A waste site in West Texas could ultimately store all the spent fuel from the nation’s 100-plus commercial reactors, and Makhijani said that transporting hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive material across the country – by rail and truck – would create a “non-trivial” risk for an accident or a terrorist attack.
“You’re inviting trouble without actually accomplishing anything,” he said. “The only benefit is to private parties – and it solves no problem. You’re taking a risk to convert scarce public assets into private assets, without accomplishing a public purpose.”
The current status of AFCI-Texas’ plan to store high-level waste in Culberson County is uncertain. Dan Hughes, whose family’s Culberson County property had been identified as the likely site for the project, said last month his family would not participate, and it is not known whether AFCI has found a willing property owner. But in a meeting in Balmorhea this weekend, a group of area residents and property owners and environmental advocates from elsewhere in the state launched an organization to oppose the creation of high-level nuclear-waste sites in the region.
Bill Addington of Sierra Blanca is on the steering committee of the new organization, which will seek federal nonprofit status. The group is tentatively called No Nuclear Waste Aquí, and Addington said the group will pursue “legal, legislative and political” avenues to prevent the creation of a storage site for spent nuclear fuel in the region. The group’s mission statement, Addington said, is that the group does “not consent to radioactive waste being dumped on our land or to transporting nuclear waste across the country.”