Skip to main content

Texas Opens Waste Disposal Facility to 36 States

wcs Here’s the news:

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 disposal site near Andrews, Texas, is managed by Waste Control Specialists (WCS) and is licensed to process, store and dispose of low-level and mixed low-level radioactive waste (LLRW). Waste Control Specialists became the first American company in 30 years permitted to dispose of Class A, B and C LLRW when the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality granted it a license in 2009. (Others are Barnwell in South Carolina and Energy Solutions in Utah, which each provide similar services for groups, or compacts, of states).

See here for the NRC’s definition of what is represented by the different classes of waste.

Since its inception, the site has been used to dispose of waste from Texas and Vermont (and Maine, too, for awhile), and Vermont still retains exclusive control of 20% of the site’s capacity as part of the deal to allow Texas to take in material from other states.

Why do this now? The answer appears to be economic.

"If the compact site is not economically viable there's no place for that waste to go," [Waste Control spokesman Chuck McDonald] said.

The compact refers to Texas and Vermont, which administer the site together. McDonald isn’t precisely correct – there are other sites – and the two states would doubtless ensure the site’s financial viability - but one gets his point, which is that there is plenty of interest in using the site by other states. As long as there are no safety issues, why shouldn’t Waste Control Specialists want to take it on? It’s what they do.

[McDonald] said that Texas regulators already deemed the site safe, and thus granted a license for the project.

So there you go. I won’t pretend this move is free of controversy – the story gets into that – though a lot of it seems the usual stuff slung around by activist groups as well as the unique qualities of Texas politics. You can judge all that for yourself.

But providing this facility to 38 states in total can only be called a very positive move.

---

The headline for the Texas story from the objective minds at NPR: Commission Lets 36 States Dump Nuke Waste in Texas. Sheesh!

Welcome to Waste Control Specialists. They have their phone number on the sign if you need their services.

Comments

D Kosloff said…
Just be happy that we get to pay for the NPR headlines. Also, that what we are paying for are ojective and solidly professional reporting. Just typing this made me feel better.

Popular posts from this blog

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Why Ex-Im Bank Board Nominations Will Turn the Page on a Dysfunctional Chapter in Washington

In our present era of political discord, could Washington agree to support an agency that creates thousands of American jobs by enabling U.S. companies of all sizes to compete in foreign markets? What if that agency generated nearly billions of dollars more in revenue than the cost of its operations and returned that money – $7 billion over the past two decades – to U.S. taxpayers? In fact, that agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), was reauthorized by a large majority of Congress in 2015. To be sure, the matter was not without controversy. A bipartisan House coalition resorted to a rarely-used parliamentary maneuver in order to force a vote. But when Congress voted, Ex-Im Bank won a supermajority in the House and a large majority in the Senate. For almost two years, however, Ex-Im Bank has been unable to function fully because a single Senate committee chairman prevented the confirmation of nominees to its Board of Directors. Without a quorum

NEI Praises Connecticut Action in Support of Nuclear Energy

Earlier this week, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed SB-1501 into law, legislation that puts nuclear energy on an equal footing with other non-emitting sources of energy in the state’s electricity marketplace. “Gov. Malloy and the state legislature deserve praise for their decision to support Dominion’s Millstone Power Station and the 1,500 Connecticut residents who work there," said NEI President and CEO Maria Korsnick. "By opening the door to Millstone having equal access to auctions open to other non-emitting sources of electricity, the state will help preserve $1.5 billion in economic activity, grid resiliency and reliability, and clean air that all residents of the state can enjoy," Korsnick said. Millstone Power Station Korsnick continued, "Connecticut is the third state to re-balance its electricity marketplace, joining New York and Illinois, which took their own legislative paths to preserving nuclear power plants in 2016. Now attention should